A grant from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation will support a new initiative at GW’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) promoting mentoring opportunities and humanistic education. The project, “Training Faculty to be Mentors in Humanism: A Faculty Development Program to Nurture Students’ Inner Growth,” is led by Benjamin Blatt, M.D., professor of medicine at SMHS, in collaboration with GW faculty members Christina Puchalski, M.D., director of the GW Institute for Spirituality and Health (GWish) at SMHS; Matthew Mintz, M.D. ’94, RESD ’97, associate professor of medicine and interim dean for M.D. program curriculum; Linda Raphael, Ph.D., associate clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at SMHS; and Ellen Goldman, Ed.D., M.B.A., associate professor of clinical research and leadership at SMHS. The program is designed to prepare faculty to take an advanced mentoring role in the revised medical curriculum, which will begin in fall 2014. The grant will support a series of faculty development workshops and the creation of a faculty learning community to explore the mentors’ own humanistic growth.
“This is an exciting time for faculty development at SMHS and we are so pleased to be a recipient of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation grant. The initiative will prepare faculty to guide students along newly developed pathways for inner professional development, as well as for clinical skills and reasoning,” says Blatt.
Puchalski and Blatt, along with Ann Doucette, Ph.D., research professor in GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, also recently received a $558,502 grant from the John Templeton Foundation for their project “GWish Templeton Reflection Rounds II: Sustaining Spirituality-based Competencies in Medical Education.”
The grant supports the incorporation of mentored reflective practice into the mainstream clinical schedule of clerkship medical students. The project fosters students’ inner life development so they are prepared to address the emotional and spiritual side, as well as the biological suffering, of their patients.
“This ability to reflect is critical to practicing with integrity, accountability, compassion, and respect for others,” says Puchalski. “With the guidance of highly experienced faculty mentors, students share their experiences and perspectives with others and then listen as others share their experiences.”
