Table 2.

How Physician-Educators Engage in Lifelong Learning: Contextual, Social, and Independent Processes.

ENGAGEMENT IN LIFELONG LEARNING	SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
Contextual (work environment and systems/structures supporting lifelong learning)	Accountability “One of the aspects I love most about working in academic medicine and having students is just how honest and current everyone keeps you to be cutting edge.” (P125) “My residents are getting smarter than me. Honestly they are my main motivator…I need to know I offer something to my residents.” (P129) Access to research “being at an academic center, I’m lucky enough to be in a place where just being there I’m in the milieu of learning about new research and what the latest best practices are for different things… Even if I’m not actively doing the research, I am privy to it and learning about it because I’m involved in it through my clinical work.”(P107) Access to training, faculty development “We do faculty development within our own division. Another benefit of being at a large academic center is there’s a lot of ongoing faculty development that you literally have to just be present and it comes to you.”(P107) Observing and emulating others
Social (learning through interaction with others)	Observing and emulating others “I shadow my own colleagues and see how they teach, especially the ones who might be more up-to-date clinically in certain areas than I am.” (P103) “I pick up things by assisting other surgeons and watching what other people do in surgeries.”(P116). Talking with colleagues “talking to my colleagues is a huge way that I learn how somebody would manage somebody else differently. It’s probably the most common day to day thing that I use to learn about managing certain conditions” (P102) Learning with and from trainees “I learn a lot every time I teach, actually, because the students coming in know totally different things than what I learned, what I knew when I came in as a medical student, and have different life experiences.”(P108) Seeking and processing feedback from trainees, patients, colleagues “I think I’m pretty good about asking learners very deliberately for constructive feedback at the end of my time with them. And if I get feedback on how interpersonally something was, or professionalism wise, or questions about it, that might prompt me to self-improve. So, seeking feedback is a way that I learn.” (P130) “there are points in time where you get feedback. And you can get it from patients… I think medical translators are actually a goldmine for communication…You can see it in people’s eyes, right? They just glaze over, they don’t know what you’re talking about.” (P113) Building networks of mentors and trusted colleagues “I recognize when there are people that I really want to emulate, and I tried to bring them in and make them mentors of mine. And I’ve done that with a couple of people.” (P134) “I’ve reached out to senior faculty who I admire or have a lot of trust in their skills, whether it is as a leader or a clinician or an educator and have asked them to be somebody that I can call upon when I need help. I have a few people that I go to regularly.” (P107)
Independent (learning on own)	Looking things up “there’s always questions that arise just from the individual encounters, that I will look up the answer to or try to refresh my memory on. So, I’ll turn to medical resources to try and learn more, or answer a specific question that was brought up by that individual.” (P101) Reviewing resources “most of it is honestly on my own time, meaning whether I have signed up for a bunch of listserv and various emails …And so those emails tend to be quick blurbs about certain topics, and so I get two are three of those a week.”(P120) Pursuing further training “if there are lectures on campus, or when I go to national conferences, I’ll both go to sessions that are things that I’m interested in and then go to sessions on things that I know are gaps for me. And then try to develop the skillset.” (P111) Reflection and Introspection “A lot of introspection … some days you feel good about how you handle tough situations and you give yourself a pat on the back. And some days you go home and say, ‘Oh my God, I bombed with that one.’ And you try and learn from it…and say, ‘Hey, I was very worked up in the situation and these are the circumstances surrounding this interaction that I had with this person. And, yes, they were wrong, but that doesn’t make it okay for me to be wrong also. And these are the things that I can do from here on out.” (P118)