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Quality In The Classroom
Academic Physican Leader Program

by Steven D. Bevier

Everyone knows that good schools need good teachers. The question is: Who teaches the teachers?

When it comes to the doctors who make up the backbone of the Statewide Campus System (SCS), that job falls to Karen Busch. She is an academic specialist at MSUCOM and her job is to help train the physicians who serve as instructors and mentors to the hundreds of residents who are educated at hospitals all across Michigan.

Her latest project is known as the Academic Physician Leader Program. The program is funded by a three-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration. She and a team of education specialists spent the first year designing curricula and training a group of six Academic Physician Leaders (APLs). The next year was devoted to working with the APLs to teach local residency instructors the ins and outs of the curriculum and how best to implement it in their hospitals.

Karen Busch and Edna Bick, D.O., and MSUCOM community faculty member, work with Jack Goloff, D.O. Dr. Goloff is a physician trainer in family medicine at Community Health Center of Branch County.

APLs - together with Ms. Busch and her colleagues - go out into the field to help local instructors develop the teaching skills needed to make that knowledge more effective. She sits down with the instructors to work on presentation and classroom techniques, and to refine the material to meet the needs of the learners. "It's a unique approach," she says. "It's not just about giving the knowledge. It's also about applying the knowledge."

Ms. Busch admits she knew little about medical education when she first came to Michigan State 11 years ago. However, she was forced to learn quickly when she was hired to direct COGMET - the Consortium for Osteopathic Graduate Medical Education and Training - the precursor to SCS. She went into the clinics and hospitals to see firsthand how doctors work and interact with their patients. Ever since, she's been developing educational programs that have benefited many an MSUCOM student. In 2001, she was honored with the MSU Distinguished Academic Specialist Award.

Now she spends much of her time working with residency directors to ensure that MSUCOM can continue to develop quality physicians. At the same time, she is refining the curriculum, always looking for ways to make it more useful to residents. "It's rewarding to see you've made a change in how residents perceive teaching and learning." The key, she says, is watching ideas get put into practice and learning what works and what doesn't.

All the while, she has continued to further her own education. Ms. Busch defended her Ph.D. thesis in medical education in December 2002. Even the teacher never stops learning.