>> Hi.
I'm Galen Folk, I'm one of the first year residents here at Penn State Dermatology.
I'm sitting down with one of our program directors, Joslyn Kirby, to have a talk about the program.
So Joslyn, I have some questions for you.
Is that all right?
>> Absolutely.
>> Great.
Question one, what makes Penn State Dermatology so unique.
>> The first thing I thought of was the way that our education is set up for the residents
is primarily you are taking care of your own patients.
We have continuity clinic.
The primarily -- not primarily, most of the time that you are in clinic, you are seeing
your own patients.
And so rather than having you rotate through different attending's clinics and seeing their
patients, and not necessarily having a good feel of how the disease began or how it progress
or how treatment affects the outcome of disease, monitoring for side effects of your treatments,
I think that you lose some of that when you're in and out and in out of a different attending's
clinics.
So you really gain an appreciation for how to work through a differential if you're not
sure of what something is, how to work through treatments, and what might work for a person
based on their insurance or their co-morbidities, and then how to manage the person through
that treatments.
So I think continuity is a huge strength of our program because you will leave residency
knowing how to manage people over a long term or through a short-term disease.
The other thing I think that makes us very unique is our sense of community, not just
in our department.
From the day that you enter, I feel like our residents -- it's not so much a hierarchy
as we truly work together as a team to take the best care of the patients that we have
as possible.
And then, also, the sense of community in the Hershey area, it's a great place to live,
to have a family.
Our patients, I genuinely enjoy the people that I take care of, and I love hearing their
stories, and I feel very lucky to live and work here.
>> Yeah, I really value getting to see the same patients over and over again.
>> Absolutely
>> I get to know them.
I get to become a part of their life, and I really enjoy that.
>> And they appreciate it, too.
>> And it's not a lot of programs you get to call your program director Joslyn.
>> That's true.
We don't really use titles here.
So I think that that just adds to the sense that, although we supervise you, we are a
team and we work together.
>> Absolutely.
All right, next question.
In what areas do you see opportunities for growth in our program, and what is slated
to change?
>> So opportunities for growth for the program is that we're considering increasing the number
of residents that we take each year.
So we currently have three residents a year, so our total program is nine residents.
We also have a dermatopathology fellow.
That fellowship has been around, I believe, for three or four years.
I believe Katherine is our fourth fellow.
And we may increase the number of residents to four a year.
And we are certainly looking for, specifically, training great residents, but we'd also like
to encourage residents to go on to become physician scientists.
And so that's a new track that we're adding to our training program.
Other things that we'd like to see change is access is a huge issue, and so we're always
thinking creatively about how we can make dermatology and our services available to
more people throughout central Pennsylvania.
>> Absolutely.
All right, great.
Yeah, it's an environment that has a lot of rich support for academic pursuits, so I think
that that focus on physician scientists is very well supported.
>> Absolutely.
And that brings up that we talk about changes in the program, but I think that there are
huge changes that can take place in the person as they go through the changing -- or rather
through training.
And so during training, I think your opportunities are not just to be a learner, but to be a
teacher.
So we have a very active medical student rotation.
We go to other departments.
And so there are great opportunities for residents to be teachers.
There are opportunities for our residents to be researches, to be involved in clinical
research or basic science research.
So certainly, I think there are alot of opportunities for the program to grow, but great opportunities
for the residents to grow.
>> Excellent.
All right, next.
What's the structure for lecture and learning here at Penn State, and who teaches?
We touched on that a little bit, but maybe we can expand.
>> Well, why don't you let them know?
>> Sure?
Yeah, I could do that.
It's great.
Every morning, we have a morning report and a lecture series, and it's taught almost exclusively
by attendings, which is wonderful.
We certainly have periodic lectures that are taught by one of the senior residents.
That's always great.
Peer learning is critical.
We learn from each other in clinic every day.
>> That's true.
>> I think, probably, my favorite part about the program so far is, being a first year,
there's a lot to learn, and the learning curve is very steep.
And I can always turn to one of my senior residents and say I really am not sure how
to do this or what to be thinking here.
And there's always somebody who is not only able to help, but very willing help.
And it's such a supportive atmosphere.
We certainly have structured lectures from attendings.
We have structured learning from our seniors, and lots of unstructured learning opportunities
all the time.
>> And I think that's true, that learning takes place in so many different avenues,
that it's not just the formal lectures.
Each mornings, the Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 9:00, the residents are in a learning
session, so whether it's a laboratory or a lecture, that those sessions are taught by
attendings, primarily, and it may be attendings from our department.
It may be dermatologists from other departments.
So we try to invite other lectures so you can get a different flavor of how problems
are approached.
We have people from other departments within Hershey come to speak to us.
So we always try to invite the gastroenterologist, the rheumatologist, infectious disease, areas
of medicine where we might overlap, and we just want to make sure that we're up-to-date
on those areas where we complement each other in different fields.
>> That's a great point.
We just had a lecture from plastic surgery this Monday.
>> That's right.
>> Excellent.
Okay.
And my last question, Jocelyn, is what do our graduating residents choose to do?
Are our residents successful in achieving their goals?
>> They're always successful, and they can have a lot of goals.
So I don't feel like the goal of our program is turn everybody into a certain kind of dermatologist
or a certain type of person.
Our goal is to facilitate your interests to help you have a broad variety of experiences
so that way you are able to make the best decision for yourself.
And so I looked back at the last 10 years worth of residents.
We had 30 residents finish the program.
Half of them went into a community or a private practice, and the other half went into some
variety of academic practice, so whether they were a clinical instructor or on a tenure
track.
So half and half, roughly.
There were 11 residents who chose to pursue a fellowship, primarily procedural, a few
that went into pediatric dermatology.
And all the people who decided they wanted to do fellowship training were successful,
so we have a 100 percent maturate for that.
>> Sounds like a pretty good track record.
>> Yeah, well, it's nice that we also have a very significant number of people that want
to go out and just be great clinical dermatologists.
And whether they're teaching patients or teaching residents, they're still doing great clinical
care and education.
>> Excellent.
Well, that's all the questions I have.
Thanks for taking the time to answer them me.
>> Thanks Galen.
>> You bet.