Resident program director of the month
Name: Robert Gregory Bociek, M.D.
Medical school attended: University of Ottawa
Location of your residency/fellowship training: University of Ottawa/UNMC
What residency/fellowship program at UNMC are you serving as program director for:
Hematology/Oncology
Number of trainees: Six
How long have you been the program director: 15 years
What made you chose to become the program director:
A desire to be involved in education and to see trainees grow as physicians/specialists in their field of study.
What challenges do you foresee in graduate medical education in the future:
I see numerous challenges:
1. The long-term stability of GME funding in this country.
2. The complexity of care that comes with present day medicine has increased the stress on our trainees, possibly contributing to burnout at a time when the learning curve should be steep, exciting, confidence building and rewarding.
3. I have concerns about the style of practice we are evolving into in the electronic medical record (EMR) era, where checking boxes and time spent in the charts is being traded off for spending time acquiring relationships with our patients and doing proper histories, exams, and patient teaching. I am concerned that the EMR leads us to collectively "act" more and "think" less.
4. A very considerable challenge for our future is how to adapt our trainees to the present style of modern medical practice while maintaining the joy and rewards they expected to feel/experience when they started medical school.
What are the strengths of your training program:
Small program with excellent faculty.
List some accomplishments that you are proud of:
Annoying my parents by playing in a rock band for a few years after high school before figuring out what I wanted to do in life.
Continuing to write/record my own music, having it be made available on most U.S streaming sites and donating those profits to worthy causes.
Helping grow young physicians into mature confident thoughtful disease experts.
Having a strong family life and faith.
Tell us three things about you that others may not know:
I am Canadian, which by definition pretty much means I am "sorry" all the time.
I have bits of my own songs stuck in my head probably 85 percent of my waking hours.
Compared to my siblings, I took the most years off of my parents’ lives through my "youthful behaviors," and yet somehow I think eventually was able to make them proud.