Didactic Experience

Our strategic vison was to make resident education the top priority of the department. Our philosophy directly linked the overall success and wellbeing of our department to the quality of educational and clinical experience we provided for our trainees.

Through aggressive and effective recruitment, we were able to add more subspecialty trained staff than ever before. We introduced an entirely young, fresh, and passionate residency leadership team supported closely by leaders with a long history of academic success in the field. In partnership with our Vice Chair for Academic Affairs, Dr. John Mitchell, M.D., we have continued to define our path to academic success.

We began a disruptive cultural change in the educational paradigms and initiatives at Henry Ford. Our team set out to completely and thoroughly overhaul the entire education approach of the residency attacking both the structural and cultural foundations of the residency program. Below you will find an overview of these changes.

1. Recruitment of a new, young, passionate, and extremely hands-on residency leadership team which has created a very palpable change in resident and faculty morale.
2. Protected time for ALL resident and fellow didactics from day one.
3. Creation of day long protected academic days for each residency class once every three weeks with didactics in the morning and institutional curriculum/Mock OSCE’s/Simulation based learning in the afternoon.
4. To be maximally effective, and incorporating the principles of adult learning theory, cognitive psychology, and active learner participation. We implemented different didactic format including PPT's, Reverse classroom, PBLD's, Panel discussions, Case based discussions, Question based learning, Oral board scenarios, OSCE's, Simulation sessions, Workshops, Skills training sessions, Board review questions etc.
5. Implementation of a rich and robust visiting professor series. We host one academic leader as visiting professor once every six weeks. We also host a journal club for the resident with the visiting professor.
6. Rapid expansion of simulation as an educational and clinical training tool, including task trainers, OSCE scenarios, Virtual Reality, and high-fidelity clinical modules.
7. High-fidelity Anesthesia OSCE training program for CA3 residents.
8. Implementation of city-wide mock oral board examinations for CA2 and CA3 residents.
9. Implementation of informal mentoring program for all interns and residents as well as junior faculty members and formal mentoring program for CA-1s.
10. Increased focus on medical student educational experience and professional development through 1:1 pairing with faculty.
11. Implementation of the PGY1 Longitudinal Curriculum, training PGY1 residents in Anesthesiology for four months in their Intern year, something unique in the country to Henry Ford Anesthesia. This innovative program brings Interns into our department and into their chosen specialty well ahead of any other programs in the country. Also gives an opportunity to CA-3s to learn the role of junior attending while supervising PGY1s along with assigned staff.
12. Introduction of High Impact Education Endorsement Program for residents as CA-2 and their application as CA-3 in a junior attending role.
13. Recruitment of a senior academic anesthesiologist to act as a third part educator for our residents, focusing on open-ended, verbal assessments of our resident’s knowledge base. Every resident CA1-CA3 receive approximately ten formal oral board exam each year of their residency.
14. Professional development sessions for our faculty as teachers to improve and maintain a high quality of didactic delivery for our residents.
15. Implementation of daily resident and faculty evaluations.