When I began the teaching certificate program (TCP) through the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Pharmacy in July of 2020, I knew that I had a strong interest in academia. Despite that strong interest, I originally had a sense of hesitancy when I thought about committing to completing two years of the program. First, I was not even sure that Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) would want me to return as a second-year resident. Secondly, I was unsure if I would possess the same passion for teaching as the year passed. As I sit here typing this reflection three-quarters of the way through this journey (halfway through my second year), I definitively know that I made the right decision committing to this second year as the passion to teach still exists within me and is stronger than it has ever been before. This TCP has been a blessing to me in terms of providing growth as an educator, confidence in myself as a lecturer, and allowing me to interact with incredible mentors who have helped me develop as a professional. As this experience has continued, I have become more cognizant of who I am as a teacher and what my strengths and weaknesses are as both an educator and healthcare provider. A second year has allowed me to challenge myself with new teaching goals while also striving further toward the ones I chose last year. I hope that this reflection point is a time I can look back on as a moment when I took the final turn from resident to professional educator. To continue to better myself in the field of academia, I know that learning must never stop. I believe that over these last 18 months I have experienced invaluable lessons that will impact me for a lifetime.

This time last year, I was proud of my ability to adapt to my learners. I knew that I had this knack to see what my learner was needing in that moment and change who I was to best fit them. I really did not have a rhyme or reason for what I was doing but knew that I needed to make changes. The fluidity of my teaching was something that made me proud. Over this summer, however, I was able to attend the teaching seminar through the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) as a Walmart Scholar. During this seminar, my scattered methodology was put into words as I learned of a process called “design thinking”. Through design thinking, lecturers are able to put themselves in the shoes of the learner and create and environment and lesson plan that are optimal for their needs. Following this realization, I began to utilize design thinking in as many teaching situations as possible. I used it when leading topic discussions with rotation students, providing in-services with nurses, providers, and pharmacists, and even when counseling patients. I knew that the method was effective because I sought constant feedback from my learners and from experienced teachers who were able to watch, but beyond that I knew that it was fun and lit a spark that gave me more motivation to educate.

I was disheartened the first time that I used design thinking to provide discharge education for a set of parents whose child had just received a transplant. Utilizing my empathy skills, I tried to place myself in their position and think about what I would want to know the most. My lesson design felt appropriate, but as I provided the information, I could tell that it was overwhelming and was not what they were searching for. I asked them for feedback at the end of the encounter and what exactly they were wanting to know before I left the patient’s room. After this discussion, it became clearer how the message should have been delivered to them, so I adapted and provided some follow-up information. This placed them at ease, and they felt more confident in the material. From then, when counseling parents or patients, I always start by asking more about what they are feeling, thinking, or doing in regard to their medication therapy. This places me in the patient or caregivers shoes and helps me decide what information is most crucial to them.

Last year, one of my weaknesses in teaching was my confidence in my knowledge and ability to teach. Following a completed first-year residency program, my confidence in my clinical knowledge grew significantly. I no longer hesitate to answer questions from my learner and rarely feel the need to double-check information that I was confident in delivering. An abundance of teaching experiences also provided confidence in my ability to provide concise material in an effective way to help my learners grow. I have also leaned heavily on my ability to communicate with different levels of learner. I enjoy the challenge of explaining concepts to learners with different backgrounds. One of my favorite video series on YouTube involves explaining a topic to a child, high schooler, college student, and expert. Sometimes when I know I am about to teach a topic that I have not taught before, I will act like I am recording a video for that series and think about what I would say to everyone. This has been a great self-reflection technique prior to delivering lessons.

My greatest weakness in teaching is likely my love to take on new experiences, challenge myself, and see how I grow from those opportunities. I have become an automatic “yes” when someone comes and asks if I would like to do something. This is mainly due to me feeling like I would miss out on the opportunity to grow. Despite warnings from many mentors throughout last year, I still took on a lot this past year. I have taught more than ever before, I have more clinical responsibilities than last year, I am participating in a Master of Education program, and I still have a personal life that I am trying to live. What I have learned from this is that I can help several people by saying yes to everything they want to do, but it can easily become overwhelming. Deadlines are easy to miss when you have several stacking on top of each other. Additionally, the more products you are trying to produce, the lower the quality each individual product will possess. My plan moving forward to overcome this weakness is to work on my ability to plan and become more organized firstly. I would like to see if it becomes easier as I become more organized. Secondly, I am going to seek the guidance of mentors who have experienced what it is like to be a new educator and practitioner who is afraid to say no occasionally. Finally, I will work on making sure to space out my responsibilities and realize that I need to say no to some opportunities so that I do not have a poor performance when it comes to those chances.

As stated above, I thought that it was important for me to receive feedback from learners and experienced teachers on my own education methods, but I also tried to become better at providing feedback for my learners on how they were progressing. I achieved this by providing constant feedback during rotations at the end of rounds daily and a more formalized feedback process weekly through “feedback Fridays”. At the end of the rotation, I asked the students to discuss the highlights of the rotation and what they remembered learning. This allowed me to highlight the important material and praise them on their strong retention of material. Feedback provided to caregivers and patients was much more abrupt and to the point because it was essential for them to learn this material so that they could go home and take medications appropriately. This was initially difficult to do because I struggled with feeling as though I was being harsh to people who were honestly trying to learn the material but were just unable to ultimately grasp it. To overcome this difficulty, I made sure to explain the importance of the material and why I wanted them to know it. This motivated the learners to try to grasp the education as quickly as possible. Ultimately, they were incredibly thankful for the method of teaching, assessment, and feedback.

I have attempted to remain dedicated to progressing towards each of my teaching goals as efficiently as possible. This means thinking about how I can utilize each experience to grow further and reach those goals. One of my goals this year was to provide more interactive learning activities. I have implemented several polling quizzes throughout my learning activities that have helped gauge the leaner’s baseline knowledge and retention of the material I am giving. I believe this has worked well and has increase the involvement of learners even when they are learning virtually. During patient education, I have also started using more charts, pictures, and devices for them to tangibly touch while I provide the education. Patients have been responses to the opportunity to interact with material they will be using even after leaving the hospital and seem to be retaining the information faster and holding onto it longer. Secondly, I wanted to continue to provide quality feedback to my learners. I believe that I have done really well on this with students on rotation through feedback Fridays and informal discussions every day. It provides constant feedback so that the student can improve, but also allows for them to express what I could do to help them further. I still have room to grow when it comes to feedback for my patients and caregivers. The kind of feedback that works best for each of them may be different depending upon who they are and what position they are currently facing. I will continue to try to learn more about my patients and caregivers so that my teaching and feedback will further address their needs. Finally, I wanted to develop lesson plans that were effective for the topic, learners, and lesson style. I feel that I am adequately progressing towards this objective by utilizing design thinking when preparing for a lecture. It allows me to think about the learner and the message that I am trying to provide to them as I prepare the lesson plan. I hope to continue to use this process as I continue to lecture. This will hopefully lead to me being more comfortable in my lesson plan development and overall teaching style.