ENRICH Week, formerly known as RIME Week, took place this year Sept. 21-23 with online poster presentations, keynote webinar, and emerging educator online workshops to engage educators from health professions across UAB. In its second week as ENRICH, the annual conference led by the Healthcare Educators Academy was a great success, according to its organizers.
Below is a short Q&A with the 2021 ENRICH Week co-chairs, Britney Corey, M.D., MACM, FACS, associate professor in the Department of Surgery, and Greg Pavela, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Public Health, about the event, their favorite research from this year’s conference and how you can watch or re-watch materials from this year’s sessions.
How would you describe this year’s ENRICH Week?
GP: This year's ENRICH Week was a success. Nearly fifty individuals presented their educational research, a clinical vignette, or innovative educational practice via our virtual poster session. You can still view the posters on the ENRICH website. Dr. Will Bynum's keynote address, "The Shame Conversation: Authentically engaging with the risk of shame in the health professions" was attended by health educators across campus, and was very well received. We would encourage all health profession educators to view it on the ENRICH website. Everyone will find it deeply moving, and it will challenge you to avoid shame when educating, but more importantly, to normalize the failures that we all have faced, providing encouragement to our trainees as they face their own failures and shame. The "Emerging Educators Workshop" provided participants with training and insight into the best practice of health education, ranging from the high-level perspective of accreditation on down to theories of individual learning.
BC: Our priority for ENRICH Week this year was to continue to make it an interdisciplinary conference that spans across all the schools that participate in the Healthcare Educators Academy and we are thrilled to say that we had excellent representation and participation from many schools! We know the momentum will continue for future ENRICH Weeks.
What research were you most excited about seeing this year?
GP: Some of the most impactful research I learned about actually came out of the Emerging Educators Workshop, in which Ryan Kraemer, MD, FACP discussed Kolb's Learning Theory and how he has applied it in his own health education practice.
BC: We were also excited to see research focused on diversity and shame, since those topics are dear to our hearts and fit well with this year’s keynote.
Which research poster was your favorite and why?
BC & GP: We had many high-quality research posters, including the two winning posters in the research and scholar category: “What’s in a Shame?” Improving Timely Completion of Clerkship Evaluations with QI (Michelle D. Veters, M.D.; Brian May, M.D., MEd; Erinn O. Schmit, M.D., MEd; Chang L. Wu, M.D., MSCR; and Stephanie Berger, M.D.) and The Role of Race and Ethnicity in Team Dynamics (Steve Otero; Christine Loyd, Ph.D.; Samantha Giordano-Mooga, Ph.D.; and N. Robert Estes II, Ph.D.)
GP: In addition to the posters formally recognized by the ENRICH Week judges, I thought Dr. Blanchard's research presentation on "Rapid Cycle Deliberate Practice" was well done. Rapid Cycle Deliberate Practice is an approach to simulation that additionally provides feedback to learners during the simulation rather than solely at a post-simulation debriefing. The benefits of this approach were examined using a randomized design and their findings had clear implications for future educational practice.
As co-chairs for this year’s event, what do you see for the future of ENRICH Week?
GP: As co-chair, I hope to see ENRICH Week continue to grow as a venue for health educators across UAB to present their research and educational innovations, incentivizing the use of educational best practices at UAB and sharing what we learn with other educators.
BC: I find it refreshing to gather with individuals who come from diverse schools but have a common goal of educational excellence. Since education is at the core of everything we do, we think this conference is for everyone at UAB and we hope to see it continue to grow. Ultimately, we know disseminating best educational practices and highlighting innovative educational research will impact our trainees and patients.