Optimizing teaching effectiveness: In conversation with Dr. Shoba Sujana Kumar
Dr. Sujana Kumar is an assistant professor in the department of medicine and chair of the education committee and site director for Endocrinology at Women’s College Hospital (WCH). She is an active teacher in both undergraduate and postgraduate education, is director of the Internal Medicine Academic Half Day at the University of Toronto and has been co-chair of the annual “Diabetes Week” course for incoming PGY4s in Endocrinology since 2010.
Dr. Sujana Kumar has been consistently recognized for her commitment to the learner experience and excellence in teaching including the 2020 PARO Excellence in Clinical Teaching Award and the 2021 Division of Endocrinology George L. A. Postgraduate Teaching Award.
We sat down with Dr. Sujana Kumar to hear more about her experience as an educator and clinician for this month’s DOM Matters.
Thanks for taking the time to meet with us Dr. Sujana Kumar! This month’s DOM Matters is focused on optimizing teaching effectiveness and the learner environment. Can you tell us about what fuels your passion for teaching?
The trainees I work with fuel my passion for teaching! Their enthusiasm for learning sparks mine for teaching. I still love watching it ‘click’ for people when they understand a concept for the first time, encounter a patient with a diagnosis new to them, or learn how to do a physical exam maneuver. Watching trainees grow in their skills and experience feels like such a privilege and makes each day rewarding.
Feedback is such an important part of the learning and teaching experience. What is your approach to feedback?
My approach to feedback is to break it down into manageable pieces that the person I am giving feedback to can work with. Are there targeted things they can work on, for example with their history-taking or their physical exam skills? Can we work on expanding details in their documentation for more clarity? Or can we create learning objectives from the patients we saw together today to learn from? Alternately, my favourite kind of feedback to actually give is to let trainees know when they have done something well – come up with a great diagnosis, or communicated the plan well to a patient, or written a great note. Often I feel that we focus ‘feedback’ on the areas to improve, and not enough on the areas to applaud!
What’s one thing you hope your residents take away from their learning experience with you?
I hope that residents take away that clinical medicine can be fun and rewarding in the outpatient setting, as often they come to Women’s College without a lot of ambulatory experience and are unsure of what to expect. I hope they also see that the longitudinal relationships we get to build with our patients are a large part of what makes it all enjoyable.
What’s your favourite part about being an educator?
See above – my favourite part about my work as an educator is the trainees I work with! They challenge me to think critically, evaluate how I do things and continue to learn on an ongoing basis.
What’s your favourite part about being a physician?
My favourite part about my work as a physician is actually the patients I get to see every day. I chose the field I chose for the longitudinal relationships I could build as much as I did for the ‘science’ behind what we do in medicine. Everyone walks a different path and comes into a clinic room with their own life story and circumstances that shape their illness experience – helping them figure out how to manage their disease and illness in the context of their lives makes what I do every day worthwhile.
