From Holistic Professional Development to Interprofessional Mentoring and Humanism: An Interview with Dr. Alice FornariIn this interview, I have the incredible pleasure of speaking with Dr. Alice Fornari, a true master educator. In March 2021, Dr. Fornari received the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) Distinguished Career Award for Excellence in Teaching and Educational Scholarship. Dr. Fornari holds the titles of Associate Dean of Educational Skills Development and Professor of Science Education, Occupational Health, and Family Medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell; Vice President of Faculty Development for Northwell Health’s 23 hospitals; and Fellow of the Association of Medical Education in Europe (AMEE). We are all benefiting from Dr. Fornari’s groundbreaking work and career, which is a testament to the integration of passions, values, and humanism to improve health care and its disparities. One program that stands out is MAP-IT, a mentoring program that changed the work culture across Northwell Health. Listen to the interview here:
graduate programs in nutrition and dietetics. Then, I decided that I really wanted to go into university administration. In that journey to enter university administration, I earned a doctorate in college teaching and academic leadership with the goal of becoming an academic dean.
The Significant Moment of Finding a Mentor And in that route, I met a physician that told me I needed to be in medical education. She said they didn’t have educators, but the doctors were expected to teach the students, residents, or faculty and understand teaching and learning on top of practicing medicine. Nobody knew how to do that, so they needed medical educators. She happened to be someone who had funding, so she was able to create a position for me at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. From that point, I listened to her as a mentor and that's where I learned about mentorship early. She guided me and I followed, and it led to success. That's how I developed my own mentoring skills and became interested in mentoring others. I always give credit to her as my first mentor in medical education. So that's how I got started, by listening to someone else who said I had the skill sets to bring forward. Medical Educators Need More than Guidance…… ES: This is really a blessing that you met the right person to guide you toward the right career path. And the problem you spoke about still persists: Clinicians are supposed to teach, but they don't know how. AF: It's a continual problem. There is much more emphasis, of course, on education in general for clinicians who want to be academics, or clinician-educators, as we call them, or science educators in terms of basic science teachers; but it's still a position that without formal training does not take them into that education role. They need guidance. ….They Need Holistic Professional Development for the Entire Human Being. ES: And you provide that guidance in many programs and initiatives. AF: That is right – and it's interesting. “Faculty development” is a term that's coined in medical education, so you are a faculty developer or you “do faculty development,” but it is really professional development, more than faculty development – that’s how I see it. It is building somebody along their professional lines. And obviously, teaching is important, research is important, and career satisfaction is important: There are many aspects that come together for professional development. So yes, my title is faculty development, but I really see myself in the realm of professional development with people. Humanistic Mentoring and Professionalism-in-Training (MAP-IT) ES: It is really a holistic approach to just see the entire human. And it must be incredibly rewarding to help steer a person toward a different career path. Can you tell me more about it? AF: Looking back on the last seven or eight years, I got involved in mentoring through a grant opportunity from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. The grant involved mentoring of interprofessionals and humanism – that’s the goal of the foundation, humanism in health care. And I saw this as a wonderful opportunity and something that was lacking at Northwell Health, specifically in my role there, the idea of interprofessional mentoring and humanism. And somehow, by miracle, I met another person who has mentored me – I've been very fortunate in my mentorship by chance. Right when I was writing this grant, I met William Branch, who is an esteemed professional in this area. And when I asked him to guide me on this grant application, he did. And with the success of obtaining this grant, I developed the program called Mentoring and Professionalism in Training (MAP-IT), which is a professional development program for interprofessionals that focuses on humanism – with the aim of developing their mentoring skills to bring back to their clinical environments. To be specific, it is a “train the trainer” type of program. And this program has grown over the last eight years into a systemwide program that has been quite successful and has had lots of positive outcomes. So overall, Bill Branch mentored me, and I am mentoring all the people in that program to develop humanistic mentoring skills so they can bring that to our younger colleagues who are in need of mentoring. Bringing It All Together AF: It’s been a wonderful, wonderful trajectory around mentoring and then culminating in my work with IAMSE, by getting the award that you mentioned and publishing my new manual. It is really more of a book. I decided to do it as an edited manual so that we could have the best experts write for it. It contains 16 chapters written by 32 authors. The manual is going to be focused on evidence-based strategies for mentoring across the medical education continuum. I am pretty excited about that and hopefully it will be out in the spring or summer of 2021. ES: Thank you very much. We can't wait to have it. I had the pleasure of participating in MAP-IT. Subsequently, you published papers on several major outcomes of MAP-IT, such as resilience. While we are waiting on your manual, let me ask one more question… “What Makes a Good Mentor?” AF: There is a spectrum of different roles you can have with people; you could be a mentor, a coach, or an advisor. But what I love about mentoring is that you are guiding someone on a journey they want to take. You're not mentoring somebody who doesn't want to go anywhere. An important part of mentorship is that you're in partnership to guide someone to a place they want to go. It differs from coaching where you're developing a specific skill that will help someone in their career. The mentoring relationship is really very open. I see it as looking into a pond of water and observing all the different things in the pond – fish, weeds, rocks, anything. You're guiding someone on their own journey through the lens of what they are seeing. That, to me, is the important part of mentoring: That I'm helping someone see what's in front of them, take advantage of that, and really be able to move forward and have a lot of career satisfaction as my goal and their goal. ES: It sounds like you have to take a very sensitive approach and be very mindful in identifying a person who wants to be mentored, finding out what they need and how to move forward, and determining where that person wants to land. AF: It’s really built on the concept of giving of yourself, being altruistic, really helping people get to the next step, and being a role model at all times. But honestly, coming from your human side of wanting to help that person without expecting any reward for yourself is really important. ES: So being a selfless leader, a selfless mentor, and serving. AF: Yes, serving others to their benefit. ES: I cannot agree more with you. We’ve arrived at the end of this interview. What is one important message you want to give young faculty developers and educators who want to start mentoring? Selfless Service for Partnership with Clinician-Educators AF: One of the messages I always say is that as a non-physician, I live in a physician’s world. As a non-physician, I have to understand the partnership that we can create as a faculty developer. To do that, I have to very clearly understand their lives as clinicians and how I can help them on this crooked road they’re on to becoming a clinician-educator. I see it as a crooked road because most of these people made the decision to become clinicians and then, suddenly, they're taking a route to be a clinician-educator or clinical researcher. I have to be there as a mentor to guide them, but I am also able to be a coach and give them skills, but I have to do that in a way where I 100% respect their lives as clinicians first. I recognize that I'm a full-time educator and they are not, and their career goal isn’t to be a full-time educator. I must respect their dual role as a clinician-educator or clinical researcher. The “educator” piece is secondary, even if it's important. How you negotiate the duality of their new role with the people you connect with is really important for positive outcomes. Being able to negotiate that role clearly has led to a lot of success. They see me as a coach, a helper, somebody who is willing to go out of their way for them and through a humanistic way extend themselves while not expecting anything in return. All the things I mentioned before have led to my role in faculty development being successful. I hope to make other people look good based on what I can offer them and be behind the scenes. ES: Alice, thank you very, very much. We're all fortunate and privileged to work with you. Thank you for the message of selflessness, as this is the only way to move society forward. AF: Thank you for the opportunity.
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