How would you describe the culture of your residency?
Our fellowship program strives to recruit and train well rounded, caring, and thoughtful physicians who demonstrate excellence in clinical practice. The mission of the program is to create a learning environment tailored to the fellow’s educational needs and goals while continuing to foster advancement of the specialty through research and inquiry. The program directly supports various career trajectories within our subspecialty field, from translational research to clinical research and clinical practice. Our focus is to graduate independent physicians that are empathetic and competent in their field, strive to be lifelong learners while meeting the needs of the community they serve who will be tomorrow’s leaders in clinical practice and medical research. This aligns with the Institutions mission of "Better care of the sick, investigation into their problems and further education of those who serve."
How has your program supported resident wellness?
As part of the fellow’s curriculum, we have sessions dedicated towards fellow wellness. These sessions are facilitated by a practicing academic oncologist who shares his or her methods to achieve balance while maintaining an active oncology practice. We also actively make adjustments to the work load to support fellow wellness and safety.
How has your program supported diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) either at your institution or in the surrounding community?
At the Taussig Cancer Institute, we are striving to build a culture of inclusiveness, diversity and equity. We believe representation matters. We recognize that hematology/oncology as a sub-specialty has not always been representative of the patients we serve and we are committed to doing better. We have created a Diversity Task Force to help build and sustain this culture of inclusiveness. Projects that this task force is involved in, some of which are led by fellows, include:
Development of educational modules to educate staff
Quality improvement projects to understand and overcome barriers to full patient satisfaction amongst under-represented minorities
Community outreach
Research into healthcare disparities, including access to genomics
We also have a robust Community Outreach Program, whose goal is to eliminate late stage disease presentation and improve overall survival through education, screening, access and patient navigation, and to reduce disparities of care through education, early detection and navigation within the underserved community.
What are unique features of your program that you would like to highlight?
This program offers a number of unique features to help support fellows during their training. For example:
We offer a number of pathways to help fellows tailor their fellowship to their specific academic interests throughout their training program.
Fellows are assigned a faculty coach during orientation to help with adjustment to fellowship. The coach offers a distinct role from research mentors, allowing the fellow to be supported in ways that are not limited to their research interest.
Twice a year, fellows are given the opportunity to share their scholarly work during the research retreat, wherein senior faculty provide review and feedback of active projects.
Our program offers leadership opportunities in the form of Chief Fellow and Quality Fellow, the latter of which is a position for a fellow who is particularly interested in quality and patient safety.
Contact:
Email: mulgrel@ccf.org
Name: Lynn Mulgrew