Impact in Education: Michael Smith, MD

Michael Smith, MD, is the recipient of the Innovative Practices in Education Award. The award recognizes an individual or team that demonstrates ingenuity, courage and creativity in teaching, including innovations in use of educational technology, experiential learning, adoption of simulation and/or creative use of the classroom.

• Name: Michael Smith, MD
• Title: Assistant professor, UNMC Division of Hospital Medicine
• Joined UNMC: 2014
• Hometown: Omaha

You are the recipient of the Innovative Practices in Education Award. How has innovation played a part in your teaching career?

Innovation was necessary for me. When I started, I would wait for the perfect opportunity to teach the entire team, which obviously rarely or never occurred. I had to learn to teach whoever was there on my hospitalist team. That gave me a large sample of ideas and topics that people enjoyed or some that people did not find especially valuable. It also gave me a sense of what were the ideal conditions and settings to teach certain topics. Then I had to convince colleagues that there was an opportunity to teach topics such as communication skills using improv theater or a weekly mystery case with a trophy to teach diagnostic reasoning. Again, the perfect situation to do that did not already exist, so with collaborators, the situations were innovated. It has really been about saying “Yes” to any opportunity that presented itself and making modifications as we went along to improve the experience. I still test ideas out with my hospitalist team to see if the ideas resonate with them and then take it to new audiences or use it to modify our existing learning opportunities. To me, that is the process of innovation in education. That process is my favorite part of my job — the process of learning something new, having a moment of clarity based on that new connection, employing that new information into my practice, teaching that information or idea to learners, then observing their moment of clarity and knowing that they will take the ideas out into their own practice.

Describe your proudest moment as an educator.
I am most proud of the community of people that help with the improv workshops all over campus and the community of people that help with the hospital medicine mystery case of the week. I am proud that those groups of people exist, but it is more that I am really thankful for each of them.

What advice would you give other faculty members who want to have an impact in education?
The secret to being a good teacher is to teach. I realize that sounds obvious, but the more I practice the skill of teaching, the better I understand how to connect to all types of learners. Every opportunity to teach helps me become the best teacher I can be and can be used to expand the reach of my teaching.

Do you have a favorite quote or philosophy on teaching?
We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.