Have you had occasion to wonder why you chose to become a faculty member in one of our four health sciences schools at the University of Louisville? What attracted you to this career path rather than one in private practice or hospital employment where salary and stability may have been better? Our mission in the Office of Faculty Development for the Health Sciences Center is to engage, equip and inspire you to become the very best you can be in all your roles as a faculty member; but principally as an educator and as a leader. We believe that working in an academic medical center is a special calling that carries with it the responsibility of training the next generation of doctors, nurses, dentists, and public health officials. To that end, we welcome you to the inaugural posting of Faculty Feed, a blog that will update you on what the Office of Faculty Development is doing to deliver on that mission to engage, equip and inspire you.

Our faculty roles as leaders, clinicians, researchers, and educators are so very critical. Many of us provide direct patient care, going bed-to-bed, and exam room-to-exam room seeing patients and providing the very best evidence-based care. When we decided to work in an academic medical center, we committed to teach students (nursing, medical, dental and public health) and post-graduate trainees (residents, fellows, graduate students, nurse practitioners) in most cases while providing patient care. We promised to train these learners, to use our experience to guide their journey to becoming an excellent provider, and to grow the next generation of health care providers.

So while our patient care efforts as individuals are essential, when we practice these skills in the presence of the learner, we magnify our personal impact on the lives of patients. You could estimate or count how many patients your direct care will touch in your career, but let’s look at this magnification effect a different way:

• how many learners will you have trained after 30 or 40 years serving in your role as a health professions educator?
• multiply that by how many lives each of these learners will impact over the course of their careers?
• And again, by how many learners they could train over the course of their career?

This magnification effect is why faculty development efforts to make us the very best educators and leaders is so very important. We want to bring the best in leadership and learning science to you. We have developed and continue to deliver an intensive 11-month course called Leadership and Innovation in Academic Medicine (LIAM). We present teaching skills workshops and sponsor reading circles to discuss practical application of learning science. We direct and teach a certificate program in Health Professions Education in collaboration with the College of Education and Human Development, and we are busy developing an online library of professional development modules designed to allow the busy faculty member to have access to this content in an asynchronous way. We exist to assure that this magnification effect is maximized for the faculty of the UofL Health Sciences Center so that our learners and our patients are the ultimate beneficiaries of our collective efforts.

The purpose of this blog is to connect you with faculty development activities and offerings, thought-provoking books, and topical issues in leadership and learning science. We invite you to join us on this journey as we learn together how to become the very best we can be.