What is the AMSA Mastermind Program?
Andrew Carnegie, the famous steel magnate, felt that one of the greatest secrets to his success was having a personal “board of directors” or “Mastermind” with whom he consulted on regular basis throughout his Career. At AMSA, we believe that if you got into medical school, you are smart, intelligent, accomplished, and an asset to anyone trying to climb the professional ladder. Being that getting through medical school is a monumental task equal to revolutionizing US industry through the mass production of Steel, let AMSA help you get to the next level by connecting you with other smart, passionate medical students who can help you achieve greater personal strength and professional success!
Purpose:
Community:
In medical school we are tested to the greatest of our ability. Just as we have unique strengths (which we often forget about), we have unique limitations and therefore unique struggles. When you combine this with the competitive culture of medical school and stiff upper lip mentality that many medical students have, the individual experience of medical school can become very lonely.
Education:
There are a lot of skills that are important to being a physician, not the least of which is counseling and being with the patient. Whiles it’s really important to learn to ask open-ended questions and other medical interviewing techniques, we feel that students don’t get exposure they need to be able to really “be” with a patient as they are counseling.
- The program has a focus on teaching techniques that students can self-apply to ease their way through their medical school experience, while also becoming useful tools in their practice.
- Participants are also exposed to informational sessions in which students are exposed to issues and topics relevant to burn-out prevention, suicide prevention etc. We will bring home to you the importance of taking care of yourself, and what are the signs of burnout. If you are ill, your practice will be ill too.
Student Support:
50% of medical students experience burn-out, 1/3 of female medical students become clinically depressed during their training, and 12% of medical students think about suicide. Every LCME accredited medical school is required to have student support services. However, these services range in their accessibility, confidentiality and quality. While we are still a small, young program, we eventually hope to become large enough to accommodate anyone who feels they need support.
- The program is very accessible as it is entirely conducted through conference calls and desktop sharing.
- The program is extremely confidential. While participants are allowed to share identifying information, they are not allowed to solicit that information from their fellow colleagues in the program. In addition, confidentiality is reinforced in the peer groups throughout the program.
- We believe this is a quality program, as it has quite a comprehensive approach to self-care, both didactic and peer-group. Along with this, we are constantly looking for ways to improve! We work hard to be predictable and not be an additional stress in medical students’ lives. As we go forward, we hope to eventually implement a big sib/little sib program as well to give students important perspective.
Here's some food for thought:
Given these facts, we can conclude that self-care is patient-care!
Imagine how powerful it would be then, if given what we have to handle in our lives today, we were able to take care of ourselves! Many physicians experience a sense of feeling ill-equipped to dealing with diseases that require addressing life-style. They know that the impoverished mom who has 3 kids and a full-time job is just as strapped for time as they are, and they aren’t doing a good job taking care of themselves either! Going through our program will be a journey of self-growth that aims to prevent this from happening!
So How Does It Work?
Every alternate week, participants participate in peer group sessions over conference calls.
- Groups are assigned based on day of preference (Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday), time-zone, and year in school.
- Each group is assigned a “group organizer” from AMSA. Though they receive additional training in group facilitation and active listening, these individuals do not lead the group each week. Rather, students themselves take turns leading sessions so they practice the arts of group facilitation and active listening. Group organizers are consultants.
In the interim weeks, they listen to skills or issue sessions by experts in their fields on such things as Active Listening, Group Facilitation, Suicide Prevention, Financial Management, Writing to heal, Cognitive Behavioral Techniques to reframe the medical school experience, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and others that take place in a webinar format. These webinars are recorded so students can attend live or listen to them on their own time.