Present: Jenny Christner, Surendra Varma, Susan Guralnick, Cliff Yu, Ed Zalneratis, Laura Degnon, Miriam Bar-on.

Topics for discussion:

• Mentoring
• Peds 101
• Taskforce workshop at the spring meeting

Mentoring

The group was charged by the board to develop a mentoring plan based on our proposal from our last call in November 2004. Rather than making this evidence based to begin with, the group decided to begin simply and try to initially target new program directors and individuals who have been program directors less than 2 years.

Although the fall meeting would be an ideal place to begin this process, there are not enough senior/experienced program directors that attend that meeting to make a “face to face” effort worth while. Therefore it was decided to try to begin this process at this year’s spring meeting. There were thoughts to perhaps have this be a regional based initiative, however, competition was raised as a potential problem and therefore this idea was tabled.

The plan for now is to have an announcement to all program directors describing the program and requesting folks to sign up for either a mentor or to be a mentor. New program directors would be invited to participate – Laura will check the ACGME directory for new pediatric program directors and we will develop a letter to send to them describing the mentorship process and encourage them to attend the spring meeting. We will also use “dots” on their name badges to designate new/first time attendees at the spring meeting and also encourage face to face meetings between mentors and mentees. Assignment or pairing of the mentor/mentee will be forthcoming.

We will try to use the wine and cheese reception during the poster session to have a “booth” for mentors/mentees to touch base if they haven’t done so before this time. We will also facilitate mentor/mentee relationships for those who cannot attend the annual meeting.

A small committee of Susan, Laura and myself was formed to develop a job description of the mentor and we will have a conference call this Friday, March 18, 2005 in the afternoon to finalize the job description and to get things ready for posting on the web.

In addition, we will have a note in the registration packet to explain the dots again and encourage using them on the name badges. The group felt that as members we would be inclined to go up to a person with a dot and introduce ourselves and welcome them to the organization, thus making the new attendees feel less “like dust”.

We will work on a call for mentors and a request for mentors. We will try to elicit some information about the needs of the mentee so as to make appropriate matches. We will try to do this “all at once” rather than phase the program in, and make mid course adjustments as the program gets established.

Peds 101

Cliff gave a report that he met with Jackie Burke from the AAP to talk about the booklet. He found out that the booklet has a wide audience as the AAP gets requests from lots of folks about medicine, about residency and about fellowships. Therefore this brochure/booklet serves as a clearinghouse for all comers. He proposed the 101, 201, and 301 concept to Jackie to target the different audiences:

• 101 – folks interested in careers in medicine
• 201 – folks in medical school interested in pediatrics
• 301 – folks in pediatric training programs interested in career opportunities.

The idea was well received, but the rate limiting step was the money. Right now the AAP has about $12,000 dollars to publish the text hard copies and post it on line. Thoughts were to have the booklets split up into the three individual stand alone brochures on line for downloading, and potentially have the three put together as one book with a new title that would be divided into the three sections.

Cliff reviewed the materials with Marty Weiss and the conclusions were:

• there was not a tremendous amount of editing needed
• there needed to be some reorganization
• there needed to be some bulking up in other areas.

Laura brought up the need for APPD credit for the project as the APPD is going to put a specific time commitment to fixing up this publication. Perhaps it could be a joint project between the AAP and the APPD.

Workshop at the Spring Meeting

The taskforce submitted a workshop abstract that was accepted for presentation. The title is Promotion and the Program Director. The workshop will focus on chronicling program director activities in a manner that will facilitate promotion to the next academic level. The group brainstormed and thought about using the model of the educator’s portfolio and other workshops that have been done at the fall meeting. Our workshop will target mid career faculty and help them brainstorm and strategize ways to be promoted. A small group of Surendra, Susan, Ed and I will work on developing the workshop. We will have a conference call to further elucidate exactly what we will be doing for the workshop. Think of scenarios, break-out groups and a beginning evidence based part.