Early Exposure, Better Advice: Medical Student Education and the Future of Anesthesiology

Medical student education in anesthesiology is often treated as peripheral to residency leadership. Less often is it examined as a strategic lever for recruitment, advising quality, and the long-term health of the specialty.

In this episode of PDs@SEA, Dr. Marianne Chen is joined by Dr. Mike Hofkamp and Dr. Christine Vo to examine how early exposure to anesthesiology shapes student interest, preparedness, and competitiveness. Drawing from their experiences as long-standing medical student clerkship directors, they reflect on how externships, early electives, interest groups, and even research participation can meaningfully influence career trajectories.

The conversation explores how medical school curriculum redesign, shortened preclinical phases, and elective flexibility have created new opportunities for anesthesia engagement. The group compares mandatory versus elective anesthesia rotations, highlighting the tradeoffs between intentional participation and broad exposure, and how each model influences student motivation and perception of the specialty.

Attention then turns to the realities of advising in an increasingly competitive match environment. The episode offers candid guidance on away rotations, virtual interviews, and the evolving role of audition rotations as month-long assessments of both programs and applicants. The discussion moves deeply into signaling strategy, unpacking gold versus silver signals, common misconceptions, and how poor advising can inadvertently disadvantage otherwise strong candidates.

These themes are grounded in the lived experience of clerkship leadership: variable institutional support, lack of protected time, and the absence of national standardization for medical student directors. The guests reflect on the inaugural medical student education session at the SAAAPM meeting, identifying an advising gap and the growing need for a national community of practice.

The episode closes with a forward-looking discussion on advocacy, mentorship, and why investing in medical student education is not optional but foundational to sustaining anesthesiology as a specialty.

Key Takeaways From This Episode

• Early exposure to anesthesiology strongly influences student interest, preparedness, and application competitiveness.
• Externships, early electives, and interest groups are powerful recruitment tools, often with unintended positive downstream effects.
• Elective versus mandatory anesthesia rotations each carry benefits and tradeoffs in engagement and discovery.
• Audition rotations now serve as critical bidirectional assessments in a virtual interview era.
• Gold signals drive match outcomes far more than silver signals, and poor signaling strategy can undermine strong applications.
• Advising gaps persist nationally, particularly around signaling, away rotations, and program competitiveness.
• Medical student clerkship directors operate with highly variable support, limiting standardization and sustainability.
• Building a national advising and education community is essential to the future of the specialty.

Especially Useful For

Medical student clerkship directors, residency advisors, program directors, associate program directors, vice chairs for education, and anesthesiologists involved in recruitment, mentoring, or undergraduate medical education.

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Transcript

Marianne Chen, MD 0:13

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to the next episode of PDs at Sea. I hope everyone is having a great start to the new year. We are very fortunate today to be joined by two guests that we're going to discuss medical student education and kind of what we're seeing, future plans, and how it's affecting our specialty. So we'll first start with some introductions. Mike, do you want to introduce yourself and let us know a little bit how you got into your role as medical student clerkship director?

Mike Hofkamp, MD 0:41

Well, thank you very much, Marianne, for having us on the podcast. My name is Mike Hofkamp. I'm currently on faculty at Baylor College of Medicine, and I have been the medical student clerkship director since 2017 for my department. I don't have a great story other than the guy who is my predecessor decided that for a lot of different reasons he didn't want to do it anymore. And I was the next logical choice because I was the faculty advisor at the time for the anesthesia interest group. But uh I took on the role and I've been doing it for about nine years now, and I've learned a lot. It's a very rewarding position, and I'm happy to talk more about it during the podcast.

Marianne Chen, MD 1:24

Awesome. Thanks so much, Mike. And actually, Mike and I have a C connection. Mike is the reason why I'm uh involved with C. And I think like many people who go to their first C meeting, join a committee table, and meet really wonderful people and get involved. And so that is how I met Mike and got involved more with C. So thank you, Mike.

Mike Hofkamp, MD 1:43

Thank you for kind words.

Marianne Chen, MD 1:45

Christine, do you want to introduce yourself and share a little bit about how you got involved in anesthesia medical student education?

Christine Vo, MD 1:51

Yeah. So I'm Christine Vo. I'm an associate professor out at the University of Oklahoma. And interesting enough, I actually started my educational leadership as an assistant program director. And our institution, historically, we didn't have a medical student clerkship director position that was ingrained within the APD role. So I actually was involved in both residency and medical student leadership and administration of the rotation. And so over time, actually being involved in the SEA, I started to realize and recognize that there was a lot of unique intricacies with medical student education and the clerkship director role and actually advocated for that position to be unique within our own institution. So I've been an actual dedicated clerkship director for the past year, although I've been involved in this for the past seven years, just like Mike too. And so it sort of grew organically recognizing that the priorities and attention that medical students need are quite different from residents. And so it's been great to be able to focus my efforts in that realm.

Marianne Chen, MD 3:09

Great. Thanks so much, Christine. And hopefully we can kind of dig a little bit more into how you kind of separated that role if that is something that, you know, other institutions and other departments are doing. So my first question is as you both know, we are seeing an overall interest in students applying to anesthesiology, which is great for our field. Um, how do you think exposure to anesthesia with medical students at their institutions impacts interest in our profession? Um, Christine, do you want to start us off?

Christine Vo, MD 3:39

Yeah, I think as early exposure as we can have is so key. You know, many times I come across medical students that have had very little exposure or understanding of what anesthesiologists actually do. And when they are exposed or rotate through our selective, they start to recognize and appreciate what actually goes into the planning and management of an anesthetic. And so they have um they start to develop interests. And oftentimes what we'll see if they are exposed in the third year of their clinical training, um, sometimes they feel like it's too late or they don't have a clear direction or advice on how to be competitive in the field. And so I think that early exposure helps not only for them to truly have the time to explore and develop interest and passion in the field, but also to gain the experiences to be competitive in this current state of our application process. So, like at our institution, for example, we have what's called an externship program. And so they get that exposure working as an anesthesia technician. And this primarily is offered to third and fourth year medical students, but you know, recently recognizing how valuable it is to get that early exposure. This past year, we've actually started to invite uh first and second year medical students into that program. And we're starting to see much earlier interests as well.

Marianne Chen, MD 5:11

Have you noticed a increasing number of students that are participating in the externship over the past five plus years? Well, that uh the nature of how our externship is structured.

Christine Vo, MD 5:23

We have a cap on how many students can be enrolled in it. So even if there is an interest, they usually end up on the wait list. So I can't like give a you know a clear number if that has increased or not. But what I am definitely seeing is the the caliber of students that are applying to anesthesia is starting to rise. We're getting students that are much more prepared, much more attuned to what it takes to go into our field.

Marianne Chen, MD 5:50

That's great. Uh Mike, how does the medical student clerkship work at your institution and what are you seeing in terms of increasing student numbers?

Mike Hofkamp, MD 5:59

That's a great question. So in 2023, we switched our affiliation from Texas AM to Baylor College of Medicine, and we had our first cohort of first-year medical students, and we had to redesign our curriculum all over again. We had to apply for electives for fourth-year medical students, and we also created an elective for second and third-year medical students. Another interesting thing about the modern medical school curriculum is that the first two years that me and as me and Christine know it, have been truncated to a year and a half, or sometimes just a little bit more than one year. And so there's a lot of extra space for electives that were just wasn't there when Christine and I, and probably you were medical students. And so we'd create a two-week elective, and it really is kind of what I consider to be a career exploration elective. There's not real, it's not, you're not putting the microscope. The expectations are just that you show up and are engaged, and we have a significant number of students come through and discover that maybe anesthesia is for them. And so I think that we have gotten a lot of students interested in anesthesia through that elective. We also have an anesthesia interest group, and we periodically hold meetings. We'll do an area workshop at lunch paired with some pizza or Chick-fil-A. And that gets medical students turned out. You give them something to do with their hands and some free food, and they'll show up. And so for my own current situation, the first class has their match next year in 27. And so I'll have a better feel for how the the impact of these things that we did. But I think that having a good NSH interest group that engaged students early and having early electives, I think, helps get people into the field.

Christine Vo, MD 8:20

And so we enrolled first and second year students in the study with the, you know, the bonus of getting a gift card after participation. The unintended consequence of that is that group of students, like there was an uptick in the number of students interested in anesthesia because of that early exposure to our specialty, being involved in that study. So I thought that was really unique and eye-opening, the fact that you know, just even one incidence can really increase their interest in their field.

Marianne Chen, MD 8:57

Yeah, that's awesome. So, what I'm hearing from both of you is early exposure is important so that they understand what the anesthesia is about and then can really kind of delve deeper into our field, do some research, get more involved. What do you guys think about, you know, differences in how schools run their rotations? Like I at Stanford, it's still an elective rotation for our students. And we have seen an increasing number of students that are interested in participating in the elective and choosing to do it. But for other institutions, anesthesia is a mandatory part of their either surgery rotation or separate as a two-week mandatory rotation. Do you think there's a difference in in students in the number of students based on whether you know they have that mandatory exposure versus an optional exposure?

Mike Hofkamp, MD 9:43

Yeah. Texas AN, when we have when we were affiliated with Texas AM, we had an elective that was just that, an elective. No one was forced to do anesthesia. And we have continued that when we switch our affiliation to Baylor College of Medicine. One of my friends and colleagues, Dr. Tim Webb from the University of Indiana, he talks often about how at Indiana University it's a required, it's a required course. It's a required clerkship. And so I don't know how I feel about that. I think that anesthesia shouldn't be forced upon people. It's you should try to get as much as you can out of medical school, but you know, I don't I would prefer to have it my system where you offer an early career exploration elective, and then you offer a more serious fourth year elective for people who really want to go into the field.

Christine Vo, MD 10:35

Yeah. My institution's similar to Dr. Hofkamp's with it being an elective. Um, it is the most popular elective at my institution. So we probably see two-thirds of the med school class rotating through. So it's nice to know that they had a choice and they selected to come in. So there are already a probably a baseline interest in our field versus mandatory rotations. But I do see potential benefits of that as well, because that might expose you to students that may not have considered it. But, you know, the fact that is mandatory might open their eyes to something that they may have missed out on had they had a choice. Interesting enough, I was one of those. I did not select anesthesia as one of my options. And for fear of, you know, once I figured out I wanted to do anesthesia, which luckily I came across it through the externship, I took it as a fourth year student. But yeah, it I would have totally missed out had I not had the externship program and missed out on something that I've been really happy with.

Marianne Chen, MD 11:46

Yeah, we're we're glad you found us and found the specialty this game. Another hot topic right now is as students are thinking about the next application cycle is this mean rotations or otherwise sometimes known as audition rotations. What do you think is the importance of audition rotations for MS4s or other students applying into anesthesia? And how do you advise your students?

Mike Hofkamp, MD 12:10

Well, what I advise my students is that you want to do an audition rotation for programs that are considered a reach or slightly more competitive than your application. I think it's good to do audition or away rotations in geographic areas you are unfamiliar with. Like, for instance, one of my away rotations as a medical student in Chicago was down in San Antonio, and that was my first time in Texas. And I flew in on an airplane and I stayed for 28 days. And now I live in Texas and have lived here for 17 and a half years. So those experiences are very valuable. You can get them through away rotations. I also advise people to do away rotations when they're really unsure about going to one program or another. And if you an away rotation will give the student the opportunity to really immerse themselves in the department and see how things really are. And but the flip side, as you alluded to, is that you can also let the program see who you really are. And so if you get caught being lazy, you get caught, you know, doing something stupid, or if you just had the bad luck of getting paired with a resident that you have a personality clash with, it is a risk to do an away rotation. And so the decision shouldn't be taken lightly. And ideally, you'd have a good advisor who gives you some good direction on which away rotations to do.

Christine Vo, MD 13:44

Yeah, I think the advice on audition rotations has evolved, especially after we've converted primarily to virtual interviews. And so prior to that, I would have told students it's not necessary, not mandatory by any means, because like Dr. Hofkant alluded to, it can actually hurt you if you don't, you know, thrive in that sort of environment, transitioning to a new place. But now I think it is very helpful to do one, you don't have to do an excessive number of auditions, but at least one where you're intentional and strategic in the location that you choose to do an away rotation at. And I think they need to use it as an opportunity to really learn about the program's culture, the clinical training environment, even what type of mentorship opportunities are available to the residents. You should treat it like a month-long interview, but I also think it's a great chance to figure out what questions you'll want to ask during the interview season. Because sometimes you don't know what to ask until you're sort of exposed to those conditions. And it gives you a chance to figure out, oh, I didn't realize they do this differently at the, you know, at a different institution. So maybe I should ask how that looks like at different programs. And some of the things and advice I think is great is, you know, use the audition rotation as a chance to explore a different place, but but come prepared, you know, come early, be prepared to work hard, be professional. I think that goes without it's an expectation, but surprisingly, sometimes that's pushed against the border. Be curious, be a good team player. And I actually think the ones that don't do as well are the ones that try way too hard to stand out in artificial ways. Like they're really pushing that, and it doesn't seem genuine. So it's kind of that balance of having that sincerity, but also curiosity.

Marianne Chen, MD 15:49

We have definitely seen an increased number of applications for visiting rotations since we moved to virtual residency interviews. And I think the messaging that you guys are sharing and the advice that you both are giving is probably similar to what students are hearing across the country. And I think the trend will be that if we continue to do virtual residency interviews, that the number of visiting students will continue to stay high.

Christine Vo, MD 16:12

Yeah. And I think what students don't realize too is sometimes the process of selecting students to do an audition rotation is a different process from selecting students for interviewing. And so there should never be this expectation that if you are invited to a visiting rotation, that you will automatically get an interview. It looks very poorly when you have that expectation and you come across entitled to an interview. So just be careful with that type of attitude.

Marianne Chen, MD 16:45

So talking about recruitment and residency interviews, uh, what advice are you guys giving other clerkship directors that you think are giving to students regarding how to strategize with signals, gold versus silver, and interviews?

Christine Vo, MD 17:00

I think Mike's a pro at this.

Mike Hofkamp, MD 17:03

Yeah, so I've I've done a lot of thought about the signals and it had been involving for a while to where the first iteration of the signals was that you had five signals and that was it. And then they added on the layer of uh five gold signals and ten silver signals. And now I believe that we've reached a state of inertia where enough people are happy with how things work right now that it's going to stay the same for this foreseeable future. And so what the five signals for gold and ten signals for silver allows it to happen is that highly competitive programs are able to exclusively interview from gold signals if they wish. Less competitive programs, but still competitive programs, can interview entirely from gold and silver signals. And there are some lesser competitive programs that don't have enough quality candidates that send them silver or gold signals, and sometimes they have to go outside the signals to try to fill their class. And so the signals are a zero-sum game. If you change the system, there's going to be winners and there's going to be losers. If you gave more gold signals to the students, the students win because they can have more tokens, if you will, going to more higher choice programs. The most competitive programs will lose with more gold signals because now they've got an inundation of gold signals and they have to sift through these even more applications to figure out who they want to go interview. And so I tell my students is that 90% of their match outcome is going to be determined by where they send those gold signals. Because silver signals, you're not likely to match a silver signal. A lot of programs aren't likely to match applicants that send them silver signals. And so people agonize over the last five silver signals, and they see it erroneously as a linear calculation that you have 15 signals, you need to spend X amount of time per signal. In reality, you need to be spending 10 times as much time on gold signals as you do on the silver signals. And so you need to put a lot of thought into those gold signals. And then the first five silver signals are usually pretty intuitive and obvious. But those last five silver signals, people just agonize over where to throw them. And you're really you're really throwing darts at a board. I mean, people get hung up over where to send those last five silver signals. And I say, if you really don't know, just make it up and just send them because it's highly unlikely. Likely that your match outcome is going to be reflected by those last five silver signals.

Marianne Chen, MD 20:06

So what advice are you are you sharing with students about how to pick those five gold signals?

Mike Hofkamp, MD 20:12

So each each uh each student gets individualized advice, but in general, what I advise my students is that you got five gold signals. One of them can be a reach, i.e., a program that you are slightly less competitive than their usual application, usual matched applicant. Three programs you want to be pure programs to you, like you fit their profile of what they take. And then you want one as a safety or backup signal. One of the dangers in being a highly qualified candidate is that when you send silver signals to programs you are more competitive for, some program directors will get the impression that they are not competitive to match you. And if they were to offer you an interview, they would be wasting their time. And so you uh address that issue by sending one gold silver, I'm sorry, one gold signal to a program that you are slightly more competitive for. That shows the program that, yeah, they got a real chance of matching you and they should interview you. And so a danger, like I said before, is if you send all your gold signals to programs that you are competitive for or slightly less competitive for, and you forget to send that backup signal, you could get yourself in a situation where the silver signal programs don't think they got shot matching you and you don't get any interviews from your silver signals.

Christine Vo, MD 21:42

And, you know, there there isn't a public resource out there that delineates what is a competitive program and what isn't. I don't think anyone wants to be towards the tail end of that list, anyways. But I think that's where your faculty advisors really play an important role because they can sort of give you a sense of where students from your program have gone to and they have a sense of how competitive they were when applying. Obviously, there's some unique factors in terms of geographic location that may have, you know, gone into that equation of where they decided to match, but you sort of get a sense of, you know, where you stand within that uh cohort and they can sort of advise you on which programs you may be, you know, competitive for or not so competitive for. And so it's important to form those connections with your department faculty because they're a gold mine of information as well. But you know, if you don't have that uh resource readily available to you, there's a lot of resources online like Frida or WAMC and RMP that have data on, you know, okay, this program tends to only interview candidates that give them gold signals, or they will interview candidates that have silver signal them as well. So use that information because that's something that has recently been published. And so it'll be crazy not to use that data.

Marianne Chen, MD 23:11

And it's also great for medical student directors to get together every so often and discuss these things. So we recently had our very first medical student director section at the November SAA PM meeting, SAPA meeting. You both were the co-leads. Thank you so much for helping to organize the inaugural meeting. What would you say were your biggest takeaways from that inaugural session?

Christine Vo, MD 23:34

Well, what was really interesting is the audience members. We uh, you know, organized this session specifically for medical student directors, but we saw advisors, we saw vice chairs of education, we saw coordinators attending the meeting, which is very eye-opening and you know, addresses the gap that has always been present at the SAPA meetings, is, you know, we recognize that there is so much variability in how programs are managed and structured and led. And so it was nice to come together and sort of share, you know, on a national level about grading, about clerkship structure, how advising and mentorship looks like. And even from the standpoint of departmental support, sort of getting a sense of, you know, what that looks like as well. A lot of people were eager to hear that amongst each other. And the format that we utilize included a combination of, you know, online live polling and small group discussion tables. And so that allowed for us to really share at an intimate level the challenges and best practices that we all have in real time.

Mike Hofkamp, MD 24:47

Yeah, I what I thought was interesting is that there are two kind of main pillars of discussion during the session. One was how do you run a clerkship and engage your medical students? And the other was how do you advise them the medical students who are pursuing anesthesia? And we by design only wanted to do an afternoon or a half day, and we spent the other day, the other part of the day, with the program directors trying to learn from them. And what we learned from the program directors is that there is a definite advising gap for the medical students who want to go into anesthesia. And so there are people who are very engaged in the process, like myself and Dr. Vaux, who could give excellent advice to medical students. And there are some medical student advisors or clerkship directors who are new to the game and just learning, and they need to have more knowledge so that they can give the best advice possible to their medical students. Because we heard countless stories about hypothetical medical students who sent all their signals, their gold signals to programs that were all reaches, and no one had told them that they needed to send three of them to peer programs and one to a backup program. And there was this, there's this pervasive idea that if you send a gold signal, you're entitled to an interview. And that's not the case for a lot of the most competitive programs. So I think if we can address that advising gap, that medical students in the country will be much better served.

Marianne Chen, MD 26:34

This was a great start having this meeting to bring everyone together and to kind of share kind of common thoughts and advice. Have you both thought further how to kind of expand this community, how to get kind of more of that information shared more broadly across the country?

Christine Vo, MD 26:50

Yeah, I think continuing on that pilot session, uh, we've gotten the green light to offer another session at the 2026 stop-up meeting. So we're excited to put together another session that hopefully, as word spreads, we get more clerkship directors and advisors to attend so that we can have this build upon this community and build upon national level collaboration. Because I think that's the key is to have this network where you can call upon each other to make sure that we're all kind of on the same page as we're advising students. Because as we all know, with how competitive anesthesiology has become, it's critical that we are giving them and our students the best chance possible with that, you know, appropriate advice. And it's funny enough, Dr. Hofkamp mentioned, I think me starting off as APD, that's where I truly, you know, recognize that gap because you're, you know, you see it in the PD sessions where the question comes up, who's giving this advice to the students? And, you know, I mean, for the most part, they're probably not doing it alone. And so it's great that we have developed, you know, this community so that we can come together and align our strategies, you know, overall for the best pathway forward for our specialty.

Mike Hofkamp, MD 28:09

And I think one of the limitations that's always going to exist is that there is not a standardized effort given to medical student clerkship directors. It's mostly people are true believers in it for the love of the game. You can be a residency program director and or an assistant program director, and the ACGME dictates how much non-clinical time you get to perform those duties, and your department is compelled to give you that time, otherwise, they're not going to have a residency anymore. It's much different for medical student clerkship directors. I get one non-clinical day once a month, and I know people who get more, I know people who go get don't get anything. And so there's a really a lack of standardization, which leads to, I think, a lack, a difference in diversity of results. And so we're never going to be able to have the standardization that the program directors have because we don't have an accrediting body that's forcing the departments to do certain things to allow us to do our jobs. But I think what we're going to have is are people like me and Dr. Voe who truly believe, and you, Dr. Chen, you were involved in our committee for a while. People who really believe in the mission of bringing medical students into our specialty, believe in advising them and seeing them through their medical school years onto residency.

Marianne Chen, MD 29:37

Such an important point you make. And I think one of the ways that perhaps they can advocate for themselves in this role as medical student corrective director is showing their department kind of the value of the student rotation and how that can help. So, how do you think student rotations can be leveraged to help anesthesia residencies and departments so that they can better advocate for the role and for the importance of the rotation?

Mike Hofkamp, MD 30:04

Well, I think it's two-pronged. You you go at your department and you go at the medical school. And so the m the argument you made to the medical schools, you say anesthesiology, even though not everybody's going to do anesthesia's a career, a lot of folks will interact with the anesthesia services, like surgeons, even internists will interact with anesthesiologists because we'll be consulting them on how to optimize our patients for surgery. And so that's one aspect. You make the argument to the medical schools that it's important to have robust anesthesia educational opportunities. The argument you make to your individual department is you say, hey, you know, these clerkships are an important arm of our recruiting efforts. And so we are one of the few programs that actually does in-person interviews. And so the person, the hypothetical student who does an away rotation doesn't have a decide advantage over someone who doesn't because everybody does an in-person interview, and then the advantage is somewhat negated of doing an away rotation. But still half or more of our matched applicants come from our away rotator cohort because it really gives us an opportunity to evaluate the student for four weeks. And so I think if you make those two arguments that are separate but related to your department and the medical school, that that will potentially create opportunities for more resources. So you can do an even better job as a medical student clerkship director.

Christine Vo, MD 31:43

Yeah, and kind of to piggyback off that, like I think if you treat your students well and you give them a positive experience, that's a huge recruitment tool. Even if they don't stay at your local program or, you know, you can't keep all your local folks, they'll go out into the nation and spread the word on how their experience was at their home institution. And that might, you know, perk people's ears up to look into applying to your program. And so that kind of trickle effect brings like the strongest candidates to look into your program, you know, recognizing that you're going to come into a place that has a culture that's going to be positive and conducive to learning and providing good mentorship. So I think it benefits you as a department tremendously because those potential future residents might end up staying as faculty and then you continue that engagement, you know, down the line. And so, you know, starting at the medical student level can have huge implications down the line, all the way to the faculty level. And then even from the standpoint of the medical school, for them to get the feedback from students that they had a really good experience, even though they don't want to go into anesthesia, they really took away skill sets and perspectives that would make them a better physician, you know, gives visibility to your department and then ultimately maybe even time or funds to be able to support you. And so that's kind of what we're starting to see at our institution is you know, the College of Medicine is catching wind that these students love coming through our department. What are they doing differently? And how can we, you know, capture that to use us as an example for other subspecialties to emulate?

Marianne Chen, MD 33:33

That's so great to hear. And thank you both for all the work that you've done to really elevate the role of the medical student clerkship director and allow for a community to be built around it at SAAPM as well as at C with our committee on medical students. Uh, my last question for both of you is what advice do you have for an anesthesiologist who's interested in an academic career as a medical student clerkship director or focused on medical student education?

Mike Hofkamp, MD 33:58

Yeah, so my advice would be to get engaged with the anesthesia community, the anesthesia educational community, go to start going to C meetings. C is one of the most, if not the most inclusive organization I've been involved with. For example, we do a dine around on the Friday night of our annual meeting where you can sign up and go out to dinner. And I've met a lot of people through the dine arounds uh who've become friends and colleagues. And so that's one of the things. C does a workshop on teaching that I actually did as a senior faculty member last year. And I thought that was excellent. You do, it's about this time every year. It's in Winter Park, Florida, just north of Orlando. It's a great immersive session in medical education. And also you want to seek out local opportunities. You want to seek out institutional and departmental mentors and make it known that you have an interest in educating medical students and that you want to be mentored to do those activities.

Christine Vo, MD 35:08

Yeah, and I completely support the attending the SEA meetings. They have a fall and spring meeting. I love them both. They have kind of a different audience for either one of them, but it is very inclusive. You come across people that are passionate about what they do. They encounter similar challenges that you do. So you don't feel alone in the process of, you know, overcoming those challenges. And it's nice to know that you have a support system out there. And the C is a great way to start to develop those connections and just know that, you know, what you do uh has value and it has impact. And to be able to do it together with a group of people that feel the same way just invigorates you. I always feel like rejuvenated after attending the meetings and because you come away with a lot of great ideas, too. That like you never thought to you know, approach something that way. And it's nice to be able to have a network where you can share those ideas with each other.

Marianne Chen, MD 36:13

Awesome. Well, thank you both for being on today's episodes and sharing your advice and views. Um, thank you also for all the work that you've done to advocate and support medical student clerkship directors and really looking forward to kind of the continued work um at SAPAM and at C and just really excited for our future with all these wonderful medical students going in. So thank you again and yeah, thanks so much.

Larry Chu, MD (Producer) 36:36

Thank you for having us. Thank you for joining us on PDs at SEA. If you found this conversation valuable, we invite you to subscribe and share the podcast with colleagues who are committed to advancing anesthesiology education. You can access additional episodes and resources from the Society for Education in Anesthesia at seahqorg.org. We welcome your questions and suggestions for future episodes. Please contact us at PDSATSEA at seahq.org. This podcast is produced by the Stanford AIM Lab on behalf of the Society for Education in Anesthesia. Thank you for your dedication to teaching the next generation of anesthesiologists. We'll see you next time on PDs at SEA.