UMEC Spotlight on Faculty Development: Jill Sutton, MD
Meet Jill Sutton, MD
Clinical Associate Professor, Clerkship Director
East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine
At the 2018 Martin L. Stone, MD, Faculty Development Seminar, Doctor Sutton (with Laura T. Mercer, MD, and Alice Chuang, MD, MEd) presented Makeover Your Life with These Simple Hacks.
APGO: What is your role in medical student education?
Doctor Sutton: I am fortunate to be involved in medical education throughout the four-year medical student journey. My main educational role is as Clerkship Director at ECU Brody School of Medicine. The ob-gyn clerkship is six weeks in duration with six cohorts per academic year. There can be as many as 15 students per cohort at our single site location. I also serve on the Longitudinal Curriculum Work Group on Health Systems Science where we are integrating quality and patient safety curriculum throughout the four years of medical school. I am course director for an Acting Internship in Perinatal Medicine. I also teach Women’s Health lectures in the first and second years. Finally, I mentor fourth year students through the residency application for those who have chosen a career in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
APGO: What was the inspiration for your presentation topic?
Doctor Sutton: When asked to give lectures on my life in medicine, I found many students asking me how do I manage it all. The answer was easy: Life Hacks! I found myself sharing many of these pearls with my students. It turns out if you are creative, you can find time to do the things that you love. I am honest with them though, that it isn’t easy and there are plenty of sacrifices we all make to be able to serve our patients and our loved ones well. I do my best to role model how to be a full-time working mother in our field of medicine.
APGO: What were some of the challenges you faced while developing your program? What was the solution?
Doctor Sutton: Working with my esteemed colleagues Alice Chuang and Laura Mercer, who are at different institutions, to develop this program together required working from a distance and overcoming the time zone challenge. We overcame this hurdle with creative e-mailing and collaboration from afar. We set goals and divided up the work and then reported our findings back to each other. We stayed on track using a set timeline. Working with such energetic and enthusiastic colleagues made it so much more fun!
APGO: What resources did you find the most useful in developing your program (including APGO resources)?
Doctor Sutton: We used literature searches to help support the rationale for using life hacks to create time and harmony in our lives. We used the internet and our personal experiences to help demonstrate how these life hacks can be adopted and implemented!
APGO: What are one to three things that you hope people who attended your presentation at the Faculty Development Seminar take home with them?
Doctor Sutton: I am hopeful that those who attend the Makeover Your Life with These Simple Hacks session will leave with practical tools that can be utilized upon returning home, making their lives more harmonious. The implementation of just one of these hacks could improve the flow of one’s weekly routine!
The 2019 Martin L. Stone, MD, Faculty Development Seminar is January 6-9 at the Hyatt Regency Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii. Click here to learn more about the meeting.