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Posted By Corey Smith,
Thursday, June 13, 2013
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The "I Believe" series is a month-long co-blog on behavioral science education in partnership with the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM). Please check back each week. I believe that Behavioral education in Family Medicine is the domain
of the courageous and resilient. Behavioral
Scientists, the "Lone Wolf” of medical education, are asked to educate
residents (often with little support) in areas sometimes antithetical to their
students’ previous 4 years of medical school.
Example: Motivational Interviewing. Teaching a group of intelligent over
achievers, who recently finished training aimed at increasing their comfort
with giving "orders,” that giving "orders” might be the worst choice they could
make? Bring it on.
On my first day in my current position, I participated in a
3 hour didactic involving the placement of first year residents into groups,
with nametags labeled "Stars,” "Champions” and "Winners,” competing to properly
identify OARS statements. What courage to
attempt such a novel approach! Three
years, and many frustrating didactics later, I see how an experienced and
effective psychologist might come to the conclusion, "You know what? Let’s put
name tags on these yahoos and see what happens.”
| Over the last three years
I have faced resistance
to the
concept of
Motivational Interviewing
the likes of which would
rival the "300
Spartans” at
the battle of Thermopylae.
|
Over the last three years I have faced resistance to the
concept of Motivational Interviewing the likes of which would rival the "300
Spartans” at the battle of Thermopylae. I began with my own resistance and maintenance
of a strict adherence to teaching the concepts of MI in a way more suited to
those attending a day-long workshop. My
first clue the car had gone off the rails occurred when, during a group meeting,
a first year resident flatly refused to participate in a role play. Awkward.
Resilience points: check. Next, I enlisted the assistance of the most behaviorally-friendly
physician faculty member I could find because, "sometimes doctors think they
can only learn from other doctors.” The
first statement from the residents upon seeing one of their own in our
behavioral meeting: "What are YOU doing
here, checking up on us?” Hmmmm…
Finally, a revelation: "Why don’t we ask the residents how
they want to learn this?” Brilliant!! (I really wish I could take credit for this…) The residents wanted to have a free form
discussion of common problems and how they might address them (i.e., smoking
cessation, weight loss, leaving an abusive partner, etc.). "But that’s not MI!!!” I protested. Knowing my colleague was better suited for
this task than I, It has taken courage to give up the reins. However, watching her execute her wisdom and
skill as a teacher made the development of resilience from constant tongue
biting to avoid the over insertion of MI terminology more palatable. (I’m barely even allowed to speak its’ name!)
At the time of publication, we have met four times with each
cohort of residents and our wonderfully helpful "Physician Mole.” I find the conversations helpful in building
rapport and camaraderie surrounding difficult areas of potential change and see
hope for the future. In true MI form, I rolled
with the resistance and sought opportunities to model and educate residents on
the Spirit of MI. It is far too early to
evaluate the effectiveness of our modality, nor have I found the method of
teaching this important skill that will define our curriculum, but we have
become more resilient teachers and maintained the courage of our convictions. We can’t go back now anyway; I lost the name
tags.
| Dr. Smith is the Director of Behavioral Health at the
Lincoln Family Medicine Center and has held that position for three years. He loves to travel, exercise and spend time with friends and his fiancée.
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Posted By Katherine Fortenberry,
Friday, June 07, 2013
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The "I Believe" series is a month-long co-blog on behavioral science education in partnership with the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM). Please check back each week. I believe there’s no such thing as work-life balance. I think this
every morning when I leave for work, watching my two-year-old son press his
face against the front window and wave at me as I back down the driveway. It
comes up again at work, as I guiltily feel relieved when a patient cancels and
I have an unexpected half hour to work on a behavioral science presentation for
residents. There is always somewhere else that I should be, and something else
that I should be working on.
As a working mother who has been a chronic perfectionist and
overachiever, the pressure is always there. If I’m not careful, this pressure
turns into guilt. I miss my son’s doctor’s appointment, and I can’t translate
his toddler-speak as easily as I think I should be able to. At work I fall
hopelessly behind in answering emails, while wondering when I’ll have time to
submit that paper for publication. It’s easy to start berating myself for not
being more efficient, for not accomplishing more at work, and then not getting
home in time to start dinner. As the Behavioral Science Educator in our Family Medicine
Residency Program, I teach work-life balance. Residents vent in support group
about the endless patient demands, of long nights, of stress in their marriages,
of their own emotional struggles. So I encourage them to focus on their goals,
to reflect on the things they’re grateful for, and put their energy toward what
they value most. Take steps to change what stressors can be controlled, and
learn to release the ones that cannot.
| I hear these words as I say them to our residents, and I
resolve yet again to start taking my own advice.
|
I hear these words as I say them to our residents, and I
resolve yet again to start taking my own advice. And sometimes I can
successfully do this. Yet other times, I compose emails in my head as I rock my
son to sleep. Or a patient’s struggles sparks one of my own worries, and I find
my mind drifting off into my own troubles. Then my work life and my personal
life collide into each other, and I wonder what kind of hypocrite I am that I
presume to tell our residents how to live their lives better.
Perhaps I should admit to myself that I can’t achieve
balance. Maybe part of me will always want to be in the other part of my life,
somehow both working more and spending more time with my family. It hurts to
think that I may never be able to spend all the time I want with my son. But I
know fighting this guilt won’t help. Instead I focus on changing my
relationship with it, and remind myself that even if there isn’t enough time,
wishing to be in the other part of my life only takes me away from where I am
now. So I close my eyes and I focus on the feel of my
son’s soft hair against my cheek. I focus on the pain in my patient’s voice. I
slowly take a deep breath. This is my only moment. 
| Katie
Fortenberry is a licensed clinical psychologist and the behavioral
health coordinator at the University of Utah Family Medicine residency
program. She received
her bachelor’s degree from The University of Alabama, and her master’s
degree and Ph.D. in clinical and health psychology from the University
of Utah. Dr. Fortenberry completed her pre-doctoral internship at the
Memphis VAMC, and a postdoctoral fellowship
in primary care psychology at the University of Mississippi Medical
Center. Her professional interests include psychological adjustments to
chronic health conditions with a focus in diabetes, as well as
cognitive-behavioral and interpersonal approaches to
treating anxiety and depression in the primary care setting. In her
leisure time, Dr. Fortenberry enjoys hiking, camping, and exploring Utah
with her husband, son, and dog.
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Posted By Karen Schetzina,
Friday, June 07, 2013
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Karen's post is the final installment in this series.
I appreciate the opportunity to
comment as the final post in this series from my perspective as a pediatrician
and medical educator. Reading the comments of Drs. Reitz and Bishop and Mr.
Ellison has provided me as a medical provider with greater insight into the
challenges that psychology and family therapy colleagues may experience as part
of an integrated primary care health team. This type of dialogue is important.
In addition to developing one’s own professional identity, understanding each
others’ roles and perspectives are keys to functioning effectively in
interprofessional teams.
Acquiring effective written and oral
communication skills and developing a common language among disciplines (and
familiarity with our different dialects) is also essential. Even in the
inpatient environment, where everyone is providing care under one roof and
mostly within the same room, care can be uncoordinated if communication among
providers, patients, and family members is poor.
|
I share the opinions that educators
should do more to ensure that trainees develop broader skills, experience a
range of clinical models, and be afforded early educational opportunities that
are interprofessional and collaborative. Spreading innovations and improvements
within groups, including educational reform within institutions, can be
challenging however, due to the characteristics of the innovation itself, the
willingness or ability of those involved to adopt the changes, and the
organizational culture and infrastructure to support change. | This series has provided a stimulating discussion
of the evolution of professional identity, influence of provider personality on
practice style, balancing tradition with innovation, and the value of
inter-professional collaborative training experiences.
|
An international commission of
professional and academic leaders in medicine, nursing, and public health
recently published a framework in the journal Lancet for transforming health
science education that is relevant to this discussion. The commission called
for educational reform to improve health systems, including "interprofessional
and transprofessional education that breaks down professional silos while
enhancing collaborative and non-hierarchical relationships in effective teams”
( Frenk et al 2010). The current prevalence of behavioral
risks and chronic conditions and associated demands on our health system calls
for training professionals and fostering systems for integrated care. Providing
team-based, integrated care with nurses, physician, psychologists and other
health professionals within the primary care setting can help in achieving the
goal of a family-centered medical home and improve patient outcomes.
Institutions, including ours, are beginning to develop and expand
interprofessional academic health science curricula to address cross-cutting
relevant core competencies including roles & responsibilities,
interprofessional communication, teams & teamwork, and values & ethics.
Leadership from institutional
officials and educators as well as influence from health system employers under
pressure to demonstrate improvements in care delivery by their health care
teams may continue to drive this educational reform.
I would like to thank my fellow bloggers and
readers for their comments. This series has provided a stimulating discussion
of the evolution of professional identity, influence of provider personality on
practice style, balancing tradition with innovation, and the value of
interprofessional collaborative training experiences. I look forward to similar
discussions with colleagues around integrated care in the future. 
| Karen E. Schetzina, MD, MPH, FAAP is Associate Professor and Director of
Community Pediatrics Research in the Department of Pediatrics at East
Tennessee State University Quillen College of Medicine.
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Posted By Caroline Dorman,
Thursday, May 23, 2013
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Caroline's post is the 3rd installment in this series. Click here to read the first, second, and third posts. How and where does a family medicine doc optimize care for her patients? How does she develop a professional identity that is robust enough to last through her life and career?
Family
Medicine is a field of archetypal legends.
My archetypes came from the wild west: Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and the
Lone Ranger. I wanted to be the one person who could see my patients' needs
clearly and save the day by treating them promptly and properly. An
admirable fantasy in many ways, this egocentric professional identity requires
subsuming of a physician’s own family and personal needs in order to function
as a superhero for patients.
My own career and ongoing development of
professional identity is an example of this process. Having been
"called" to rural medicine, I practiced in a town of 7000 after
residency. I assumed care of every patient in the ED who was bereft of a
provider. I delivered ALL of my patients’ babies...including canceling
vacations in order to do so. I ran group visits for Diabetes in the evening
rather than eating at home. After four years of practice, 4000 of the 7000
people in town considered me their physician.
|
My partners, LPNs and MAs were
allowed to assist in patient care but never, in my mind, to lead.That was
because I also assimilated the other family medicine archetype: the superstar
quarterback. This approach to my professional
identity led to disillusion and exhaustion. For a time, my commitment to
working 90-120 hours a week in order to accomplish all of this was well
rewarded with the ego boost of being considered the best. Patients were led to
expect 24 hour attention from me and I was destined to disappoint. My own
physical health suffered.
| Family Medicine is a field of archetypal legends.
My archetypes came from the
wild west: Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and the Lone Ranger.
|
While some may consider this
approach to be patient centered, it was in fact physician-centered because it
did nothing to ensure the stability and consistency necessary for ongoing
patient-centered care. Rather, it fostered an unrealistic dependency. The
care was focused on the physician because the patients were focused on the
physician.
In contrast, with the PCMH model and
the collaborative care setting, patients are able to expect just as much from
their health care provider team. Indeed, their expectations are much more
realistic because the responsibility is shared and thus, ideally, its provision
is much more robust.
Mental health providers are better trained overall to resist
the quarterback role in their patients' lives. Their ability to share
this approach with family physicians in the collaborative care setting, and to
model the conducive behavior for them, is one of the many arguments in favor of
collaborative care. Nonetheless, individual practitioners do often isolate
themselves from a patient's care team. They may find themselves
shouldering a quantity of responsibility for the patient's well being that they
cannot maintain and that would be more patient-centered if shared with others.
I’ve concluded that the characteristic, whether inherent or learned, most
helpful for collaborative family physicians is humility. Humility allows the
practitioner to relinquish the superhero role. Rather than being the brains of
the operation, or quarterback...we act more like a fullback. We clear the
way for our patients to reach their own goals. We cooperate with each other so
that our personal strengths are put to the best use.
In so doing, we allow time for a
continued personal identity that parallels our professional identity.
Time spent fostering professional and personal relationships creates a
more robust and, therefore, a more long-lived professional career.
So, I can assert without
exaggeration, that collaborative care saved my identity as a full-spectrum family
physician. Without team-based care I was
faced with choosing between my full-spectrum practice and the rest of my
life. With collaboration I can foster my
identity without jettisoning the rest of my life.
There is one caveat to this success
story, however. I was forced to
reconsider my Dr Quinn Medicine Women archetype. Unfortunately, collaborative care is mostly
impossible to practice in rural America.
The financial models and operational supports don’t yet exist in towns
of 7000 people. So, I moved to a larger town where I practice in a
residency setting that has the advantages that can sustain collaboration.
As to the previous blogs: I agree with Dr Reitz's hypothesis that
collaborative clinicians benefit from
extroversion, self-direction and multitasking (I’ll call this
constellation of attributes ESM). Nonetheless, I would suggest that these
habits are generally chosen and self-fostered over a period of time. Even
if we scrutinize the successful old-timer rural family doc we see, in many cases,
some form of tight knit team that includes perhaps, his wife, nurse, assistant
and patients. Even the most introverted, task-focused among us (like
these old-timey doctors we want to emulate) can and do develop some degree of ESM over time in order to
better serve their patients.
The question, then, is the rate at which an
individual provider maximizes her ESM by experiencing Chickerings vectors of
identity development and how able she is to continue to experience them over
time so as to hone their practice more and more to her patients’ benefit.
At St Mary’s Family Medicine Residency, our
faculty and residents foster our skills in a collaborative setting wherein
providers who see themselves as fullbacks quickly become the most adept at
allowing patients to run their own medical lives. As a member of the patients
team we block for them, accept handoffs at times, and occasionally run ahead
for a pass. 
| Dr. Dorman joined the faculty of St Mary’s Family Medicine Residency after practicing nine years in Craig, Colorado. She completed medical school at the University of Oregon and her residency at St Mary’s. In recognition for her work in rural medicine, she was the 2009 Colorado Family Physician of the Year
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Posted By Jeffrey Ellison,
Thursday, May 16, 2013
|
Jeff's post is the 3rd installment in this series. Click here to read the first and second posts. The
comments of Dr. Reitz and Dr. Bishop in this series to date bring to mind a
recent conversation with several of my fellow graduate students. In this conversation, my peers suggested
that: 1) integrated practice is less complex and thus less effective than
traditional methods of clinical practice, and 2) mental health providers with sub-doctoral
training are qualified to provide collaborative care services, so why would a psychologist
want/need to do it?
When
I first began writing this post, I had planned to formally rebut my peers’
"misconceptions” of integrated primary care (Had they actually read the
research?); to finally set-the-record-straight about integrated primary care (What
about psychotherapy? There are plenty of very qualified and competent
sub-doctoral level providers with expertise in traditional psychotherapies!); and
to prove to everyone that the practice of integrated primary care is actually a
worthwhile endeavor (Even for a psychologist!).
As I read through the other blog contributors’ posts, however, I began
to sense that the conversation that I had with my peers was not about the
"facts” of integrated care at all.
Instead, this conversation may have been a representation of our
divergent professional identities.
But
how do students 3, 4, or 5 years into their respective programs develop such
different professional identities? In
the initial post in this series, Dr. Reitz discussed how trainees pass through Chickering’s
seven "vectors” multiple times throughout their educational journeys. In the first years of graduate training, the
"identity” that all trainees develop (Chickering’s 4th vector),
though broad and rudimentary, is likely fairly uniform across trainees. As trainees undertake more clinical
experiences they pass through Chickering’s vectors again and again (e.g., during
beginning practicum, advanced practicum, and internship, etc.).
| Trainees are particularly
vulnerable to identifying
with the first thing
(i.e. model, theory, etc.)
with
which they become
confident and competent.
|
Through this process, students hone and focus
their professional identities based on many factors including personalities,
interests, and specific experiences. Inevitably,
as a result of this process, students will conclude their training with unique
and personally tailored professional identities. Increased job satisfaction, career
investment, and productivity are all likely positive side-effects of this
process. Additionally, this process
promotes variety within our respective fields, thus allowing our fields to
remain flexible and adaptive even in this ever-evolving healthcare
environment.
Unfortunately,
there are also downsides to our increasingly divergent professional identities. In the conversation I described above,
neither my peers nor I were able or willing to stray from our narrowly defined
professional identities. We took the
same classes, participated in the same clinical experiences, worked with the
same supervisors, and progressed though the same clinical psychology program, but
we seemed to have nothing in common! How
could this be? In reading again through
the previous posts, I realized that the reason that it may have seemed that we
had nothing in common was that, though we had well developed individual professional identities, we
had poorly developed group
professional identities (e.g., we had only vaguely and narrowly defined
concepts regarding what it really to be a clinical psychologist or mental
health provider). In other words, we had
become so focused on "the trees” that we could not see "the forest.”
I
recognize this as a problem specifically within the clinical psychology training
process, however, I would bet that the same problem occurs within other fields
as well. I hypothesize that this
hyper-focus on specialization (i.e., sole focus on developing an individual professional
identity) has its roots in the first years of training. When trainees enter graduate school, they
typically come from a undergraduate programs where they were likely considered
highly competent and top-of-the-class.
When they enter graduate school, however, they are again inexperienced
"newbies,” who have to prove themselves in a new program. Because of this, trainees are particularly
vulnerable to identifying with the first thing (i.e., model, theory, etc.) with
which they become confident and competent.
Students become fixed on domains in which they are competent instead of
continuing to explore new things (i.e., models, theories, etc.) and struggling
with incompetence again. Granted not all trainees are seduced in this way, but
in my case, it certainly makes sense. My
initial practicum experiences occurred in integrated primary care, a setting
where I am still exclusively practicing today.
In writing this, I am
not trying to suggest that it is not okay to specialize or that it is a necessarily
a mistake to become enamored with the first experiences in which you taste
confidence and competence.I am
suggesting, however, that it is important for trainees to carefully analyze
their motivations.I also think that it
may be important to rethink the structure of training programs so that they may
have introductory experiences (i.e. not just book work) in a wide range of
clinical models and theories prior to specialization.As such, I completely agree with Dr. Bishop’s
assertion that providing students with inter-professional and collaborative
experiences very early in their training may help facilitate the development of
a more broadly defined professional group identity. 
| Jeff Ellison is an advanced student in
the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at East Tennessee State University. In his current externship placement he provides
behavioral health services to patients presenting in primary care and community
health settings across the state of Tennessee via videoconferencing. His
research interests include: the integration of primary care and mental health;
the use of technology (e.g., videoconferencing) in expanding access to
behavioral health care; rural mental health care; and dissemination,
implementation, and quality improvement for primary care and mental health
settings. In his free time, he enjoys running, hiking, biking, and
exploring the outdoors with his family.
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Posted By Tom Bishop,
Thursday, May 09, 2013
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Tom's post is the 2nd installment in this series. You can read the first post here. I certainly appreciate Dr.
Reitz’s assertions of a developmental progression in professional identity
formation as one prepares to work within integrated care. It does seem intuitive that one would pass
through each of Chickering’s seven "vectors” as they progress through training
and service as a primary care provider.
It is also seems plausible, and very much supported by observances in
the field, that there is a personality style, or as Dr. Reitz
postulates, a "collaborative identity” that tends to lend oneself in being a
good "fit” for serving within integrated care.
That said, I believe that taking
another pass at McDaniels et al (2002) curricular article may provide more
clarity to why some clinicians excel at integrated care and embrace innovation
over traditional roles. McDaniels comments, "Psychologists-in-training need to
develop the skills that solidify their identity as psychologists” and that
having a "positive professional identity” would serve one well in working
within primary care.
I am led to recall an experience
I had with a couple of students in training.
They were sharing the tension they experienced in learning the core
skills and attributes of what it means to be a psychologist while considering
what their work would look like within a primary care setting. They voiced concern that working in an
integrated care setting, especially at that start of the training, would be too
"narrow,” and limit the development of their clinical skills in some way. I believe that these concerns are closely
tied to how one understands what it means to be a "psychologist.”
More recently, the field of
psychology has begun gravitating back toward a more comprehensive identity. I
say "gravitating back” because Lightner Witmer who is considered by many to be
the father of modern clinical psychology understood psychology as
collaborative, scientific, and as a catalyst for addressing problems. According to one reference: "Witmer never
intended for clinical psychology to become segregated from other helping
professions, particularly medicine and school psychology” (Brown, Prime, &
Wade, 2012, pg. 1). However, this vision
for the field has not been the prevailing image or impetus of training. "Indeed,
Witmer envisioned a unified yet multifaceted discipline that possessed many
progressive and innovative ideas that were lost or ignored over the course of
the 20th century”
(See pg 2 where Brown et al discuss Routh, 1996).
| One reason clinicians
may flounder within integrated
care is that they have come to
embrace a more "contained” perception of what it means to
be a clinical
psychologist,
medical family therapist, social worker, or school psychologist.
|
Put broadly, then, one reason some clinicians flounder within integrated care is that they have come to
embrace a more "contained” perception of what it means to be a clinical
psychologist, medical family therapist, social worker, or school psychologist,
and that perception is inherently independent rather than collaborative.As a corrective, training
programs might emphasize the importance of core, foundational skills that would
allow a behavioral clinician to collaborate with others rather than become
"soloist.” It may also be critical to
stress that our training allows us to be good at what we do, and that we are
not to become something that we are not.
Elliott and Klapow (1997) suggested that "We must broaden the
professional options for our trainees by emphasizing behavioral science
expertise versus mental health service provision.”
In returning to Dr. Reitz’s
discussion of Chickering’s model as providing a means of examining professional
identity formation, there is at least one other consideration. Perhaps training and early career experiences
are more characteristic of what Erikson and James Marcia described as a time of
crisis in one’s sense of occupational and social identity. This period of professional life is fraught
with the search of "fit,” growth, conflict, and tension.
While personality is a factor,
early career clinicians identification with their profession may be more characteristic
in how they have wrestled with what it means to be functioning as a behavioral
clinician. Some may have entered into
training and work with a great deal of uncertainty and little reflection or
consideration (Identity Diffusion), while others may have gone in full throttle
with little exploration of what their particular field (e.g., psychology,
social work, etc.) could encompass (Identity Foreclosure). Still others may truly be in crisis where
they are unsettled and desire more from the work that they are doing, which
seems to fit Dr. Reitz reflections on establishing identity (Identity
Moratorium).
Perhaps "controlled and supported
crisis” is what may be helpful in training and in challenging trainees to
consider a broader conception of their discipline. It may be that McDaniel and the other authors
were speaking of Identity Achievement when they commented how having a solid
identity would prepare one for working within integrated care. They would possess the core understanding, skill
set, and commitment for what it means to be a psychologist.
In summary:
- The success of a clinician in integrated care
is inherently linked to how we portray, teach, and model a comprehensive
understanding of what it means to be a particular behavioral health discipline,
whether that is a psychologist, social worker, medical family therapist, or any
other. Trainers want to foster the development of a
sound identity for that discipline.
- At
the same time, trainers could do better at challenging trainees in developing
broader skills and in challenging their notions of what it means to be a
psychologist, social worker, etc. It
seems that this would be facilitated by having training opportunities that are
more inter-professional and collaborative.
These opportunities would, perhaps, create conflict and crisis in roles
and functioning within an interdisciplinary team.
- While
personality is certainly a factor in what leads one to consider a career in
integrated care, this could be said of any profession, ie…why does one person become
a plumber vs an engineer? Perhaps an
analogy would be the contrasts of a jazz musician who is classically trained
and a musician of another genre of music – they are each well versed in the
foundations of their craft, but express these skills in varying ways.
I am certain and hopeful that the
next response will challenge many of these premises.
| Dr. Bishop joined the faculty at the Johnson City Family
Medicine Residency program at ETSU/Quillen Medical School in March of last year
after serving several years with Cherokee Health Systems as a Behavioral Health
Consultant and pediatric primary care psychologist. Thomas received his Psy.D. in Clinical
Psychology from Wheaton College with an emphasis in the integration of
psychology and theology, and a Masters degree from Central Michigan in general
experimental psychology with an emphasis in brain injury and recovery of
function. His professional and
research interest include primary care, rural and organizational health, faith
and medicine, positive psychology in medical care, sports psychology, and
neuropsychology. Perhaps most
important, he and his wife Barb, who is brilliant in math, and have three
children, two in college and one that thinks she should already be in
college. They are often found together
on a trail, running, or camping.
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Posted By Randall Reitz,
Friday, May 03, 2013
|
 Why do some clinicians excel at integrated care while others flounder?
Why do some of us embrace innovation while others yearn for traditional
models?
The development and orientation of one’s professional identity plays a central role in predicting success in
integrated care. This 5-week blog series
will present professional identity development from numerous perspectives. Following this initial post, each week we
will host posts that react to and build upon the previous blog from the
perspective of a different discipline:
May 9th—Psychology
May 16th— Graduate student
May 23rd—Family Medicine
May 30th—Pediatrics
What is Professional Identity?
My interest in this topic was first piqued by the McDaniels et al
(2002) curricular article for training primary care psychologists. The authors observe that
"Psychologists-in-training need to develop the skills that solidify their
identity as psychologists. Psychologists
who have a positive professional identity are most likely to be able to work in
collaborative primary care settings.”
Intrigued by this comment, I set out to investigate professional
identity development. I found precious
little in the health education literature, and nothing specific to integrated care.
About the closest thing I could find was an article that applies the Chickering
Theory of Identity Development to medical residency education. The Chickering
Model describes 7 "vectors” through which trainees and students pass during
professional development. They are:
1.
Developing competency
2.
Managing emotions
3.
Developing autonomy
4.
Establishing identity
5.
Developing mature interpersonal relationships
6.
Developing purpose
7.
Developing integrity
Most theorists apply Chickering’s 4th stage, "Establishing
Identity,” to under-graduate education and look at the global self-concept
(e.g. cultural identity, appearance, self-worth, social role). However, I would assert that professionals
pass through each of Chickering’s vectors at each level of training. The level of stress and the pace of
development become more manageable with each new training or employment
experience, but the vectors are clearly experienced.
For example, nearly all of us can identify our own experience with the
vectors upon entering grad school or medical school. We are finally entering the realm of our
chosen vocation and we don’t want to screw it up. Looking back at my experience at Indiana
State University, here are the cognitions I recall with each of the Chickering
vectors:
Developing competency—"I need to learn
Excel, SPSS, Powerpoint, email (yes, I’m that old) at the same time I figure
out Minuchin, Bowen, White, and de Shazer.
I was able to fake my way through undergrad, but this is a whole new
level of expectation”.
Managing emotions—"I’ve got my
supervisor behind the 2-way mirror witnessing a completely out-of-control
couple in the middle of a screaming melted down. Chest tightening, palms sweating, thoughts
racing, tongue stuttering, just keep it together for the sake of the couple.”
Developing autonomy—"OK, the first day
of my off-campus internship site. I’ll have weekly meetings with my on-site
supervisor and the program faculty, and I can consult with them by phone if I
need. I can be successful here.”
Establishing identity—"I’m a narrative
therapist who has been able to help many couples and families. People with a similar skill level as me have
gone on to careers in academia, why not me? I love what I’ve read about
collaborative care, and working with physicians. People scream less in medical
settings.”
Developing mature interpersonal
relationships—"I’m the only person in my program who fancies collaborative
care. How can I bring them along? Which
potential mentors could bring me along?
Developing purpose—"For the last 6
months of my masters degree, I haven’t read a single assigned reading,
preferring instead to read texts and articles on collaborative care and medical
family therapy. I’ve also sought out any
case I could find with a connection to physical illness.”
Developing integrity—"I’m confident in
my core family therapy skills and in my ethical practice. While my opportunities to collaborate have
been limited, I’ve demonstrated professionalism in my accessibility and
proactivity.”
Each additional career stop has offered a fresh experience with the
vectors, but with the benefit of the competency and connections made with
previous steps:
Doctoral
program → Internship → Clinic management → Residency
faculty
Each of these experiences has broadened my perspective regarding
collaboration and has deepened my commitment to our field.
In my supervision and employment of medical and behavioral health
providers in integrated settings, I‘ve come to appreciate that these settings
are like the Briar Patch from the Uncle Remus stories: either noxious or
nonpareil. While some clinicians have a
preternatural, innate collaborative ability, others can’t get out of their own
way. I believe the key differences come from a professional identity that grew
out of personality. Perhaps
controversially, I will assert that the collaborative identity is a triad of
characteristics: extroversion, self-direction, and multi-tasking ability. And,
while I will make an exception for extroversion among physicians, I won’t do so
for behavioral clinicians.
In support of my triad, I believe that just about everyone who is drawn
to primary care and behavioral health settings comes with some desire to
improve the human condition. However,
this desire manifests itself differently based on one’s professional
identity. Some clinicians are
tailor-made for a traditional community mental health setting that provides
clearly defined roles, schedules, and patient panels. They provide amazing service to some of the
most marginalized and afflicted people in our communities. Others have the entrepreneurial chops to
build their own private practice through competition in the free market.
I’ve seen several of these types of clinicians fail or flounder in
collaborative settings. I find that the
private practice entrepreneurs never accept that they are a small, but
important piece of a large and sophisticated system. They also struggle to accept that the
physician is the sine qua non of primary care, whereas the behavioral clinician
is the added value. Among clinicians trained for community mental health, the
lack of structure and the need for constant networking can seem tedious. They find the daily onslaught of new
referrals and "other duties as assigned” maddening and would much rather
provide continuity services to a known patient panel.
| Perhaps
controversially,
I will assert that the
collaborative identity is a
triad of
characteristics:
Extroversion, Self-direction,
and Multi-tasking ability.
|
In contrast, the great collaborator draws energy from the non-stop,
unpredictable heterogeneity of integrated practice. We couldn’t tolerate the drudgery of eight
50-minute hours. We would also feel
terribly hampered by not having "our team” to help out. And by "our team”, I don’t mean the other
behaviorists, I mean the nurses, front desk, case managers, and physicians of
my pod. Rather than feeling competition by sharing care with clinicians with
different skills and scopes of practice, we are drawn to being a round peg in a
square hole. And, based on the
developmental newness of integrated care, rather than being intimidated by
cutting new trail in our professional settings, successful collaborators share
a pioneering spirit.
Those are my beliefs about the collaborative professional
identity. I’m hopeful that the next
posts in our series will:
1.
Contradict many of my assertions;
2.
Explain how this identity can be trained;
3.
Expand the discussion to be more relevant to
medical clinicians. 
| Randall Reitz, PhD, LMFT is the
founding editor of CFHA Blog and Families and Health blog. He is the Director
of Behavioral Sciences at the St Mary's Family Medicine Residency in Grand
Junction, CO where he directs a collaborative training program for family
physicians, medical family therapists, and psychologists. He is co-chair of the
2013 CFHA conference in Denver, CO.
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Posted By By Laura Sudano (ft. Reitz),
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Updated: Thursday, May 30, 2013
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Laura and Randall's
post is the last
in a 5-part series on
leadership in
collaborative care.
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If you have been in your chosen career
for more than five years, please disregard this blog.
Stop reading now.
It is not intended for you.
Your persistence is starting to creep
us out.
There, much better. Now we can speak candidly.
Early career professionals are in a
tough spot. Not only are we asked to carry more than our weight in proving
ourselves, we do it with the limited networks and without the influence of
people who are already established in their careers. Facing this double whammy, what can we do to
exert leadership? How can we utilize
those who are willing to help us in moving the field in the direction we
believe is most fruitful?
Well, for starters, we can learn from
Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, and Beyoncé Knowles.
In Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom,”
he described his leadership style as follows:
"A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock,
letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not
realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
Meanwhile,
across the Atlantic, US historians parse political narratives to identify a
"doctrine” that encapsulates a president’s leadership style. The emerging "Obama Doctrine” is a
Mandela-esque "Leadership from Behind”. This doctrine is described in both
glowing (here, here, and here) and
derisive (here, here, here, and here)
terms.
For Obama
supporters, leadership from behind describes a president who has assembled a
team of brilliant rivals that follows a rigorous process to hash out a
consensus. They describe Obama as a
president who is willing to allow all branches of government a role and in
international affairs they see him as diplomatic and insistent that America not
go it alone.
While
Mandela and Obama are obviously world leaders elected to high offices, we wonder
if "leadership from behind” might be the optimal approach for early career
professionals who are positioning themselves for future collaborative care
leadership.
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Another
figure from which we ECPs can learn is American singer, songwriter, dancer, and
actress, Beyoncé Knowles. Like Obama and
Mandela, Beyoncé has been a role model for leaders and young
professionals alike. Her unparalleled
entrepreneurial business savvy has been on display since an early age. She is
always re-defining herself and developing as an artist.
From a
collaborative perspective, she promotes women musicians by having an all-female
band (as seen on Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show here) and collaborating with artists outside her
genre including Sean Paul, Shakira, Justin Timberlake, and Lady Gaga. Through collaborating with other early career
musical leaders she asserts her own identity (influencing) and remains open to
others (being influenced).
Although ECPs
may feel that they are still in a learner’s position, consider the following
question, "How can I be influential to those around me when I’m still in
training?” Asking the question of how you could be influential allows you to
examine where you have been in your professional career and where you would
like to go. And most importantly, who is
coming with you. More specifically, reflecting
on the unique aspects that you bring (or brought you) to the field of integrated
care and how you can access and expand your network
to influence the field accordingly is something that ECPs can do right now.
Building
allegiance and support among current leaders can help you, the ECP, to lead
from behind. One can achieve this by
presenting ideas to those you look up to as current leaders in the field and
join collaboratively, whether it be for a paper, a presentation, or
interviewing the individual(s) for a class project.
Another
approach to early career leadership is lifting others in your cohort. To riff off
the many versions of Advice, Like Youth,
Probably Just Wasted on the Young by Mary Schmich (see here), your
colleagues, like siblings, are "the best link to your past and the people most
likely to stick with you in the future.” Lifting others in your cohort and staying
connected to others who you’ve met through networking is an invaluable
relationship. Similar to you approaching
current leaders in your field, presenting your ideas to colleagues is invariably
impacting others. As a result, you build
your network and display your ideas to others so that you can continue to lead
from behind.
Leadership
from behind for ECPs may appear as a pro-active approach to an unfortunate
reality. However, as ECPs, we have an obligation
to influence and be influenced. As systemic thinkers, we know the value of
moving away from a linear approach (e.g., people are depressed because of an imbalance
of chemicals in the brain) to a systems approach (e.g., psychosocial factors play
a part in depression). As such, we
should move away from the top-down approach (e.g., implementing what our
leaders have shown us) to a cyclical approach (e.g., presenting our ideas to colleagues/leaders
and in turn, have them be influenced by us).
We hope this post will spark conversation about how ECPs "lead from behind” and (if any
mid- to late-career people stuck it out) how mentors have witnessed ECPs
"leading from behind.”
Here are questions to consider:
1. What are limitations faced by ECPs seeking leadership opportunities?
2. What can be done to overcome these obstacles?
3. Who are your role models in early career leadership?
4. What are other leadership styles you have seen to be effective
for ECPs?
5. Does a feminist perspective support or
discourage "leading from behind”?,
| Laura Sudano is a Marriage and Family Therapy doctoral candidate at
Virginia Tech and works as a Medical Family Therapy fellow within the
Family Medicine residency at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, CO.
She currently serves on the Denver 2013 CFHA conference planning
committee and is the co-chair for CFHA's Social & Networking
Committee.
| 
| Randall Reitz should not have contributed to or read this blog. The possibility that he still considers himself an early career professional is delusional, laughable, and probably creepy.
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Posted By Jeri Hepworth,
Friday, April 26, 2013
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Jeri's post is the fourth
in a 5-part series on
leadership in
collaborative care.
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Twenty-four hours in a day, thirty days in a month, twelve months in a year, thirty-five or forty years in a career – how do we want to spend those hours? What do we want to accomplish, what do we care about? These concerns of time management consultants are also salient for those of us fortunate enough to be collaborative consultants whether in clinical practice, administration, policy or academia. The better we work with others, the more frequently we will be invited to take on new roles. Yet the success of new invitations and opportunities can easily slide into stress and distress. We all know colleagues who, when asked about their life, say, "Way too busy”. And though it can be tempting to consider them important in their many roles, I also find myself wanting to distance. I prefer to socialize, work, and learn from others who do not always appear overwhelmed. We want colleagues and leaders who manage their anxiety and their time, not those who act frenetically like Kramer from the Seinfeld episodes. So how can we do it? How can we take advantage of the multiple opportunities around us without letting them take advantage of us? I do not pretend to always do it well myself, but I enjoy helping individuals and systems consider their passions and priorities. This has included clinical work with families, team and organizational development, and mentoring of other professionals. As Director of Faculty Development programs for our medical school, it is a privilege to support leaders, or faculty who are considering promotion, and help them think about what they do well and how they can be more successful. Just like clinical work, it is easier to do it than write about it. My response is to simplify, and to organize my thinking as "Pearls”. It is also fun to use alliteration, so I suggest a list of pearls that includes: Passion, Plan, Prioritization, Pro-action, Prioritization, Promotion of Others, and Play. What’s yourpassion? A powerful group exercise is to have people share why they decided to enter their career. Generally, it reflects deep meaning about wanting to make a change or an impact. Reminding ourselves of our ongoing larger commitments is core to professional success. We may not know how we are going to make the difference or what exactly we will do, but stating our core values and purpose helps us form a personal mission statement – a statement that can be used to measure the relevance of new opportunities. What’s your plan?Create your plan to reflect your personal mission statement as well as a realistic appraisal of your interests and energy for new opportunities. Assessing interests seems relatively intuitive. Does this new opportunity excite me? Does it add to my evolving personal mission, or will it distract me and move me further away from the things I most care about? Opportunities for administrative roles are prime examples that require careful consideration. If I take on this Director position, for example, will I really be able to help set the direction of the clinic, or will I spend most of my time involved with budgets? Assessment of energy is a second factor. Do I care about this opportunity enough to work more? Or if I take on this role, what will I give up? This is the place to consider the developmental trajectory of a career. Early in my career, I made a choice to work three-quarter time, but not when my children were infants and enrolled in excellent child care near their father. Instead, I created more flexibility after I had gained my first academic promotion (part of my personal mission). At that time, my children were in public school, and I was able to participate more with them in sports and after school programs (also part of my personal mission). A caveat holds for executions of plans. Interviews of later stage satisfied professionals rarely identify a rigid plan about how they achieved success. Instead, most report that they generally knew what they were interested in, but they were also open to new opportunities. The challenge is to take the time to measure those new opportunities against the most important ruler – that of personal passion and commitment.
How can you prioritize according to your plan? There are at least two factors that can help us make choices that move us toward our personal definitions of success. One is to select those opportunities that reflect alignment between our personal mission and the goals of our larger systems. The second is to prioritize activities and opportunities that we can and will actually do. A clinician in a consulting practice may agree to give a series of parenting talks to a community group because the presenter cares about affirming families in the community (part of their personal mission). Giving those talks also helps market the collaborative practice (alignment with larger system mission). Colleagues skilled in collaboration know how to create win-wins. The second factor about prioritization is to promise carefully, something I have not always done well. Sometimes opportunities seem so exciting that we jump for them without determining whether we have the skills or whether we can prioritize the time to complete them. Opportunities do not help us meet our goals if we have to apologize for not getting a promised task completed. Just as in personal interactions in which negative comments count far more heavily than positive comments, work that is late, incomplete, or poorly done is remembered far more than work which was appropriately done. How can you be pro-active without being pushy? Sharing a plan with others helps provide personal commitment. It also makes it clear what help one can use from others. Pro-active professionals ask for formal and informal mentoring, and let others know what they are interested in achieving. "Graceful self-promotion” includes volunteering for an activity, letting a colleague know of an achievement, or informing another why you will not consider an offered opportunity. "Thank you so much for asking me to write the book review. I want to do a good job, and I feel this is not in my area of expertise. But I’d be very interested in reviewing a book about health system redesign. Could you keep me in mind for something like that?” How can we best promote others? Great leaders celebrate others. Collaborative care professionals know why recognition is important and how to do it well. Appreciation – whether done privately through conversation, emails or notes, or publicly through other forums, builds relationships. Recognition of others creates a culture that facilitates success for many. In the example above, in which the opportunity to write a book review was turned down, a further statement can be helpful. "My colleague would do a great job with this book review. Can I give you her name?” Or, "Would it be helpful for me to think about who might be do a good job with this review and get back to you?” (And then, since it is a promise, make sure you do get back.) What is the relevance of play? Successful people find ways to create play in their personal life as "balance”, but also find joy and play in their work. A sense of play leads to renewal, re-vision, and frequently gratitude. We are fortunate people to be able to engage in work that we have chosen, that is meaningful, and that we enjoy. We are doubly fortunate to be able to continue to determine how we change and grow in our work. Play is not an add-on, but a responsibility. Play allows us to remember our passion, refine our plans, and prioritize our efforts. Our work is too important to be left to those who just put in their time. 
| Jeri Hepworth, PhD LMFT is professor and vice chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Connecticut. She is the immediate past president of STFM. Her professional work has focused on families and health, psychosocial issues in medicine, and managing personal and professional stress. Among her publications, she is co-author of 3 books: Medical Family Therapy, The Shared Experience of Illness, and Family Oriented Primary Care.
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Posted By Alexander Blount,
Thursday, April 18, 2013
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|
Sandy's post is the third
in a 5-part series on
leadership in
collaborative care.
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One of the roles of leadership in a field is being comfortable speaking
on behalf of the field. To do that, it helps to have a clear summary
that is understandable to someone outside the field. One name for that
summary is an "elevator speech. It
is called that because it designates what a person could say to
another person while making conversation riding together a few floors in
an elevator. I had an opportunity to try out my skills at the elevator
speech for integrated primary care not long ago on an airplane. I was
seated next to a gentleman for a couple of hours but we didn’t start to
speak until the last 10 minutes of the flight. He was
a guy who has to fly a fair amount because he has several small
businesses. The businesses were quite varied. He was clearly a self-made
guy who was doing OK but was not extremely successful, an entrepreneur
on a comparatively small scale. He knew about doing
everything his own way and he made his own decisions. It was not in an
elevator, but we were changing elevation and the length was only
slightly longer that a 15 floor ride in a high rise.
This is not verbatim, but close, and the last line is a quote.
The conversation went something like this:
Bob: So, do you come to San Diego on business or pleasure?
Sandy: Business, I’m here for a conference on integrating mental health into primary care.
Bob: What’s the advantage of doing that?
Sandy: It’s the best way to improve the health of the people who come
to Primary Care. Primary care is where people bring all the problems
that theydon’t know what to do about. A lot of times those problems,
even the problems that are clearly physical, are
related to the fact that they don’t take care of themselves. They are
depressed or they are anxious, or they drink too much, or they don’t eat
right, or don’t take their medicine, so they feel bad, so they hurt.
When people are hurting it tends to make them
more anxious or more depressed, or they drink more, or exercise less.
If the doctor says he/she can take care of the part that hurts but they
are going to send them to a mental health service or a substance abuse
service for their anxiety, or depression, or
drinking, a majority of the people don’t go. For them it doesn’t feel
like two separate things. It feels like one thing. It’s only when you
bring a person who can deal with anxiety and depression and alcohol use
problems into the primary care and put them
on a team with a doctor that the patient feels like he/she can get
their whole situation cared for.
It even costs less because if the person doesn’t get the
whole situation dealt with effectively, they tend to go other places
like emergency rooms to try and get enough care to relieve their various
pains.
Bob: I’m trying to imagine what that would be like in the doctor’s office. How would it work?
Sandy: Well, if you came because you had a pain or because it was
time for your physical, the doctor might talk to you about how your life
was going or give you a screening test that would take about 5 minutes.
The test would help pick up if you were having troubles with
depression or anxiety or drinking. And if any of thoseseemed to be a
part of the situation that you’re bringing, the doctor might call in a
psychologist or a clinical social worker or some
other person that they would probably call a behavioral specialist. The
doc might introduce you to the behavioral specialist and go see another
patient or two while the both of you talked. Just like primary care
doctors take care of everyday kinds of problems
after they make sure it’s nothing that’s going to kill you, behavioral
specialist would probably do the same. He/she would ask you a couple of
questions to be sure that you weren’t in a very serious or dangerous
situation but then they would focus on getting
you better as quickly as possible. They might work with you to find
something that you like to do everyday, which actually has been shown to
start improvement for people with depression, orthey might teach you
some breathing exercises that actually make a
difference with people with anxiety. When the doctor came back in the
behavioral specialist might make a recommendation to the doctor about
whether the doctor might consider prescribing you some medicine. You
might come back to see the behavioral specialist
a time or two to be sure that things are heading in the right
direction. But in the long run you just go back to working with your
doctor and the behavioral specialist would be somebody who would be
available if you ever needed them again.
Bob: That sounds terrific, sign me up!
| Alexander Blount is Director
of the Center for Integrated Primary Care and Professor of Family Medicine and
Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA. At UMass he has developed training programs in Primary Care
Behavioral Health and Integrated Care Management that have already trained 2000
people for the workforce needs of the transformation of healthcare. His books include Integrated Primary Care: The Future of
Medical and Mental Health Collaboration and Knowledge
Acquisition, written with James Brule’. He is Past President of the Collaborative
Family Healthcare Association, a national multidisciplinary organization
promoting the inclusion of mental health services in medical settings and he is
past-Editor of Families, Systems and
Health.
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