Time travel: a discovery tool for identifying individual professional development needs

Thomas V Chacko

doi:10.4038/seajme.v5i2.202

Abstract

Time travel: a discovery tool for identifying individual professional development needs

Highlights

After formal qualification, most practicing doctors try to update themselves to keep abreast with new knowledge and practice through periodic Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs
Whereas identification of current level of competency can be done by either selfassessment against expected performance standards using a validated tool or by peer assessment of an individual’s performance in practice, or by chart audit, 360 degree evaluation by all stakeholders etc, the challenge is how and who will identify the “what ought to be” level of competency that will make the doctor an efficient and quality practitioner of the future
The participants are taken through a Time Travel exercise in which they are asked to visualize themselves 5 years and being appreciated by their patients/specialty fraternity/team members/relatives of patients and their own family members for their good qualities/behaviors/skills that is enabling them to excel professionally. This exercise helps them identify their expected “target” Continuous Professional Development (CPD) competencies which are making them successful and appreciated by people who matter. Once they list these target competencies in their own words, they are asked to go through the list of subcompetencies under each of the six ACGME Core competencies listed on a worksheet and identify which ones from among those identified by them closely match with the listed ACGME competencies

Summary

Background

After formal qualification, most practicing doctors try to update themselves to keep abreast with new knowledge and practice through periodic Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs. There is evidence from literature which shows that doctors become more motivated to learn and achieve required CPD goals when they discover their own CPD learning needs, plan their own CPD activities, do deliberate practice and receive feedback for improvement in practice at their own pace. This increased motivation is explained by the Need reduction theory. The Need reduction theory can be put to practice by doing a needs assessment (discrepancy analysis) which identifies the gap between “what is” and “what ought to be” (Fox & Miner,1999)

The need for Innovation

The Innovation