Terry Manko (mom), Pamela Manko (wife), Dr. Jeffrey Manko, and Norman Manko (dad)
Educator Spotlight:
Jeffrey Manko, MD
Department of Emergency Medicine
In this edition of the Educator Spotlight, Michael Poles, MD, PhD interviews Jeffrey Manko, MD, clinical associate professor in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine, director for graduate medical education, and faculty advisor to the Violet Society Program-the Mentor and Career Advisor Program for NYU medical students. Dr. Manko was awarded the 2018 Educator Community Award for Distinction in Education.
You have worked on many different projects over the years. Which of these do you feel has had the greatest impact in the field of medical education?
As a member of the Emergency Medicine residency leadership team for over twenty years, I was always proudest of my endeavors to enhance residency education and the projects that made those residents into educators themselves. By focusing on the importance of communication, professionalism, social medicine, and teaching skills using a variety of modalities (like simulation), we have been able to create academic leaders and educators for the 21st century. I feel my greatest impact to medicine are the outstanding physicians who completed their training here at NYU School of Medicine and who now provide outstanding patient care and further the field of medical education locally and nationally.
How can NYU leverage the skill and hard work of its senior and junior faculty to further achieve worldwide renown in the field of medical education?
The simple answer is collaboration across specialties. I have been so impressed with the immense talent and expertise that exists across the institution. You find that most departments, programs, and disciplines are experiencing similar challenges, and the partnerships that develop to solve these problems are when greatest outcomes occur. The Educator Community is one way to interface with many scholars across all specialties and begin the collaboration process.
How do you balance your many roles and still excel at all of them?
I think the key to success is to be passionate about those roles and find areas of synergy. For me, creating educational programs using simulation and other modalities that can be tailored to all levels of learners (UME, GME, CME) and all disciplines and specialties accomplishes some of that balance. I have been fortunate to work with and learn from great academic leaders here at NYU and they have helped me understand how to align my efforts under the giant umbrella of medical education.
Which of your current research projects has gotten you most excited?
I am excited about the work that I am doing on wellness and feedback - two areas that I believe are critical in medical education and closely tied as well. As a member of the wellness committee, we are working across the UME/GME continuum to increase personal resilience, enhance community and culture within programs, and bring awareness to structural changes in programs that could benefit everyone. We are continuing to develop programs which assist both faculty and residents in recognizing a struggling learner. On the feedback side, we have been developing scenarios at NYSIM to encourage honest and open communication between learners and faculty to improve performance. The goal is to provide faculty with the psychological safety to give honest, productive feedback while learners develop a culture of wanting and expecting to receive meaningful feedback to improve.
Simulation is a necessary component for all graduate medical training programs. How can GME program directors engage with you in various simulation exercises to benefit their trainees?
At NYSIM, we love creating new programs and already have a vast catalog of offerings that are easily modified to any specialty. Giving informed consent, breaking bad news, disclosing medical errors, doing handoffs, giving feedback, and recognizing the struggling resident are all important communication skills across the UME-GME continuum. If you have a creative idea, let me know, and we can develop it together.
Do you have any advice for physicians looking to take their first steps in a career in medical education research and scholarship?
Pick a niche - find something you are passionate about that you can focus your academic time on. Find a mentor - at NYU, you are fortunate to have so many to choose from. Mentors may be within your department or outside your department, or both. It is likely that whatever you are interested in, someone else is doing work in that area as well. Be well - make sure that in addition to working hard clinically and academically you leave time for yourself, your family and friends, and your hobbies. (See you at Yankee Stadium.)
Sondra Zabar, MD
Recipient of the 2019
NYU Distinguished Teaching Award
This year, Sondra Zabar, MD, is among the six recipients of the New York University Distinguished Teaching Award. Her innovative approach to training physicians as both clinicians and teaching faculty has raised the bar in how doctors are educated here at NYU School of Medicine and on a national level, making her richly deserving of this honor.
Dr. Zabar is the co-director of the Primary Care Residency Program; director of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Clinical Innovation; director of the School of Medicine’s and NYU Simulation Center’s Standardized Patient Program; and founder of the Program for Medical Education Innovations and Research (PrMEIR). She developed the “first night on-call” simulation for first-year residents, and evaluated how effective the training was in preparing them for their first days on the job.
In addition, Dr. Zabar implemented an annual assessment of core clinical competencies in primary care residents, using actors as standardized patients. Now in its 18th year, the Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) has been adopted by our residency training programs in Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine, General Surgery, Orthopedics, Anesthesiology, Geriatrics, Gastroenterology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Zabar has been a key driver behind our E4E–Education for Educators longitudinal faculty development program; the Merrin Bedside Teaching Faculty Development Program, which supports faculty in researching and developing a curriculum to improve bedside physical diagnoses; and the highly competitive internal PrMEIR Innovation Grants Program, which supports faculty in conducting mentored research in medical education.
By conferring the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award, the University has recognized Dr. Zabar's passion for cutting-edge medical education scholarship, her proven talent for leadership and mentorship, and her deep commitment to innovation and research.
Please join us in extending our congratulations to Dr. Sandy Zabar on this well-deserved honor.
Registration Now Open
Eighth Annual Medical Education Retreat
For more information or questions about the Education Retreat, please email educators@nyulangone.org. Register to the event here.
NYU School of Medicine Awarded the
NBME Edward J. Stemmler
Medical Education Research Grant
NYU School of Medicine received funding from the highly competitive Edward J. Stemmler Medical Education Research Fund of the National Board of Medical Examiners. The research grant entitled “Assessing Residents’ Clinical Performance Using Resident-Sensitive Quality Measures” (PI Schumacher) is a multi-institutional, international collaboration. The goal is to establish direct patient care measures of the clinical competence of our trainees from data available in the electronic medical record.
The principal investigators from NYU include Jordan Swartz, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine and Adina Kalet, MD, MPH, Professor, Departments of Medicine and Surgery. This work was first outlined in a paper published earlier this year in Academic Medicine (Smirnova, A; Sebok-Syer, S; Chahine, S; Kalet, A; Tamblyn, R; Lombarts, K; van der Vleuten, C; Schumacher, D, Playing Darts with Spaghetti: Overcoming the Challenges of Defining and Using Clinical Performance Measures in Graduate Medical Education (Aca Med, online January, 2019).
Collaborators on this project include: Daniel Schmacher, MD, University of Cincinnati, Saad Chahine, PhD, Queens University, Canada; Steven Durning, MD, PhD, USUHS, Washington D.C.; Robyn Tamblyn, PhD, McGill University, Canada; Cees van der Vleuten, PhD, University of Maastricht, Netherlands; Kiki Lombarts, PhD, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; Stefanie Sebok-Seyer, PhD, UCSF; and Alina Smirnova, MD, PhD, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Using Public Data to Follow Graduates into Practice
Keynote speaker: Marc Triola, MD, FACP, Patrick Cocks, MD 2019 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Annual Educational Conference
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