Environmental Scan: Drivers of change in education, content delivery, and career advancement
Workforce diversity and mentoring
A global economy requires organizations to seek a diverse workforce. Diversity can also lead to higher levels of profitability and employee satisfaction. As such, it will be essential for organizations to increase opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds to join the workforce. Creating a diverse workforce will mean removing barriers of time and location to skill building through online learning opportunities and facilitation of interdisciplinary career paths.
A critical piece of the emerging model of career development will be mentoring. Many professionals in today’s workforce view mentoring as an opportunity to gain immediate skills and knowledge quickly and effectively. Mentoring has evolved from pairing young professionals with seasoned veterans to creating relationships that match individuals with others who have the skills and knowledge they desire to learn about – regardless of age and experience. Institutions striving to develop a diverse workforce will need many individuals to serve as both mentors and mentees. When searching for solutions to work-related challenges, individuals will increasingly turn to knowledge management and collaboration systems (virtual mentoring) that provide them with the opportunity to match their needs in an efficient and effective manner.
Dr. Buckley values peer-to-peer mentoring as a means of accessing and sharing niche expertise among colleagues, but he acknowledges the difficulties in incorporating it into everyday practice. “The biggest obstacles are probably time and access. More and more learners and mentors are recognizing the tremendous value of effective mentorship, so convincing people is less of an issue than finding time,” he said.
Mentorship will continue to play a central role in the advancement of one’s career, yet women and minorities find it increasingly difficult to match with a mentor within the workplace. These candidates are likely to seek external opportunities. Individuals will evaluate the experience, opportunities for career advancement and the level of diversity and inclusion when seeking and accepting a new job.
Dr. Buckley sees both progress and remaining challenges in reducing barriers to underrepresented groups in medical institutions. “There continues to be a need for ongoing training to help individuals and institutions recognize and eliminate their barriers and biases, both conscious and subconscious, that interfere with achieving diversity and inclusion. Another important limitation is the pipeline of underrepresented groups that are pursuing careers in medicine. We need to do more empowerment, encouragement, and recruitment of underrepresented groups at a very early stage in their education if we ever expect to achieve our goals.”
Future challenges
The transformations described above will require a large investment by physicians aiming to maintain professional currency, by creators of continuing education content, and by employers seeking a diversified workforce. All these stakeholders have an interest in the future direction of continuing education and professional training. The development of new platforms for delivery of content that is easily accessible, formatted for a wide variety of devices, and built with real-time feedback functions will require a significant commitment of resources.
References
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2. ASAE. “Foresight Works: User’s Guide.” ASAE Foundation, 2018.
3. Online Course Report. “The State of MOOC 2016: A year of massive landscape change for massive open online courses.” Accessed Sept. 3, 2019.
4. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Postsecondary Success: Data and Information.” Accessed Sept. 4, 2019.
5. QYReports. “The Microlearning Market Report, 2018.” Accessed Sept. 4, 2019.
6. Adams S et al. “NMC Horizon Report: 2018 Higher Education Edition.” Louisville, CO: EDUCAUSE, 2018.
7. An M. “Content trends: Preferences emerge along generational fault lines.” Hubspot: Nov. 6, 2017; updated Dec 14, 2018.
8. Grajek S and Grama J. “Higher education’s 2018 trend watch and top 10 strategic technologies.” EDUCAUSE Review, Jan 29, 2018.
Note: Background research performed by Avenue M Group.
CHEST Inspiration is a collection of programmatic initiatives developed by the American College of Chest Physicians leadership and aimed at stimulating and encouraging innovation within the association. One of the components of CHEST Inspiration is the Environmental Scan, a series of articles focusing on the internal and external environmental factors that bear on success currently and in the future. See “Envisioning the Future: The CHEST Environmental Scan,” CHEST Physician, June 2019, p. 44, for an introduction to the series.
