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This week on the Faculty Factory podcast we have an interview with Amanda Termuhlen, MD. Dr. Termuhlen is Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, in the Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Dr. Termuhlen mentions early in our interview that she is an avid listener pf this podcast and that she has gained a lot from listening to it. In addition to this making my heart happy, it also reminds me that I’d love to hear from YOU in regards to what you like (or don’t like) about this podcast by visiting our Contact Us page.
Dr. Termuhlen started her journey as Associate Dean at the University of Minnesota Medical School in June 2018. She is internationally recognized for her expertise in rare pediatric non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Her research has focused on cancer treatments and clinical trials for lymphoma.
What Keeps You Up at Night
Dr. Termuhlen brings up that age-old question during our interview.
“One of the issues we talk about in the Group on Faculty Affairs (GFA) is that session on ‘What Keeps You Up At Night’, and I always thought that was a cute name for a session until I took this job,” Dr. Termuhlen said while laughing.
Here’s an excerpt of Dr. Termuhlen from our podcast:
I realized there are things that definitely keep us awake at night. I view what I get to do for faculty development as very positive and good for the faculty and institution.
I also think of professionalism and disruptive faculty members as an opportunity to really look at how to tackle those issues across the entire institution, especially since our clinical sites are scattered.
We have affiliate institutions and multiple practice sites. How do we bring all this together to really give everyone the advantage of a great working and learning environment? One of the things that I wanted to tackle right away was to deal with people that are struggling and make things better across the culture.
It’s not particularly innovative or new, but one of the first things I set out to do was get a good relationship with human resources; both on the medical school side and on the clinical practice side. [With that relationship] we could really work together to identify who is struggling before they get into situations where there may be formal complaints or concerns registered.
Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM)
As you might have heard on last week’s podcast episode with Nancy Spector, MD, we chatted about the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program. Dr. Spector is the Executive Director of ELAM, and once again this wonderful initiative came up in today’s podcast with Dr. Termuhlen.
Dr. Termuhlen discussed how the leadership skills she gained from ELAM helped her achieve the career she always wanted in academic medicine. ELAM has more than 1200 alumni and is clearly a hugely beneficial program, to learn more about it I recommended taking time to visit their website.
The passion that Dr. Temuhlen has for this work is contagious! She also mentioned that she has been an active member of the GFA for about the last ten years. She also leans on that support to help her with these “What Keeps You Up at Night” issues.
Make sure to listen to today’s interview by utilizing the podcast player embedded above.