Lessons from Varun Phadke, MD

Educational Landscapes

Varun Phadke, MD is Director of the microbiology thread in the preclinical phase of the MD curriculum, Director of the internal medicine clerkship in the third year of the MD curriculum, Associate Program Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program, and Assistant Vice Chair of Education for Clinical Reasoning in the Department of Medicine, Emory University School of medicine. In this episode Varun talks about how he's been passionate about education since grade school, but it was only when he went into his fellowship program that he was shown various pathways to make pursue education within medicine. Varun's words of wisdom for aspiring educators and education leaders include "you're not alone. Find colleagues, mentors, sponsors, collaborators to help you further the impact of your ideas." "I think your learners know more than you think they do. And your job is not to make them know more. Your job is to help them think through what they already know." and "when you have no clear defined role, that means many people are going to think that you are tasked with helping them, which may or may not be true, even if it's exciting for you."

Resources

• The Moth | Podcast
• Learn Serve Lead: The AAMC Annual Meeting
• Home - AAIM (Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine)
• Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine