8 NOVEMBER 2024IN MY OPINIONUPSKILLING MEDICAL EDUCATION ADMINISTRATORS By Corinne Wilcox-Schowalterm, Director of Education Operations, Children's Minnesota Before perpetually involving herself in the childcare industry, Corinne Wilcox-Schowalterm started her career as a makeup artist at Bobby Brown, Marshall Field's in 2004. Upon serving brief tenures in multiple organizations, Wilcox-Schowalterm joined Children's Minnesota. After 15 bright years at the company, she plans to improve healthcare services and operations through a customized approach to continuing medical education (CME).As learning is a continuous process for progress, its prevalence is important beyond academic institutions to educate professionals. This is also true in the medical industry where updated skills can save lives. This article highlights Corinne Wilcox-Schowalterm's efforts in addressing the varied capabilities, backgrounds and preferences of medical administrators to enhance operations and initiate professional growth. Different origins but one goal In my experience, the highly skilled professionals who administer the field of medical education come from diverse backgrounds and training ­ many with no knowledge of or previous intention of joining it. I suspect there are more than just me who have found themselves doing this work nearly by accident (or maybe luck.) In my over fifteen years in medical education, I have met people who entered the field fresh from undergrad, having had mid-career transitions into it, and those who entered it after going through medical training and discovered a love for it. I have had the pleasure of working with coordinators and education managers with backgrounds in public health, sales, library science, nursing, finance and even zoology. No degree or field of study directs one into medical education, despite the entire field being predicated on the particular educational needs of physicians and physicians-in-training. Once on the job, there may be some basic training that mainly depends on the institution and any co-administrators to explain the unfamiliar nuances of graduate medical education (GME) and CME. It is very much an on-the-job learning experience for most of us. A critical piece for the success of medical education programs The benefits of continuing education (CE) are obvious and observable ­ we measure outcomes before and after education designed for the healthcare team and see measurable Corinne Wilcox-Schowalterm
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