Being a Lifelong Learner - podcast episode cover

Being a Lifelong Learner

Dec 20, 202422 minEp. 123
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Episode description

In this episode of Lab Medicine Rounds, Justin Kreuter, M.D., speaks with education specialist Bob Jackson on the challenges and importance of being a lifelong learner.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Importance of lifelong learning
02:03 Challenges of lifelong learning
06:07 Adapting to change
10:58 Teaching and learning
13:39 Embracing uncertainty
17:00 Encouraging lifelong learning
24:00 New Year's resolutions

Transcript

Introduction

- This is Lab Medicine Rounds, a curated podcast for physicians, laboratory professionals and students. I'm your host, Justin Kreuter, a transfusion medicine pathologist and assistant professor of laboratory Medicine and pathology at Mayo Clinic. Today we're rounding with Mr. Bob Jackson, an instructor in laboratory medicine pathology here at Mayo Clinic to talk about the challenge of being a lifelong learner.

Importance of lifelong learning

Thanks for joining us today, Mr. Jackson. - Oh, it's my pleasure. So cool to, to be invited on. - Absolutely. So, so what the audience doesn't know is that we work together quite, quite well on the learner side of things.

And, and as somebody whose heart also goes pitter-patter for education, I thought this would be a really fun way, you know, as this is our holiday season episode, you know, we're going to the new year and everybody's getting kind of New Year's resolutions and thinking about how to do things. You know, this, this idea of being a lifelong learner popped in my head. And I, I wanted to kick off this conversation with you by asking like, why, why is it important to be a, a lifelong learner?

- Oh, so, you know, when I, when I think of that question one, I'm like, maybe I was born into it. My, one of my favorite stories that my mom tells, I actually don't remember, is first day of kindergarten, I come home from kindergarten and my mom's like, Hey, what'd you learn today, buddy? And I was just like, nothing. All we did was color.

And I just being disappointed with, I, I was prepared, I guess, you know, good parenting, maybe she prepared me for, you know, this great learning experience that was gonna be kindergarten and all we did was color. So shout out to mom,

Challenges of lifelong learning

but, you know, why is it important to be, 'cause things change, you know, medicine, lab medicine, life changes. That's, that's why you gotta be ready to learn and adapt. Could be, you know, all sorts of things. Like whether your career changes, you know, I've had multiple careers over the course of my young life and things have already changed. I'm relatively new to transfusion medicine. I started my career here at Mayo some 15 years ago now in the clinical chemistry lab.

Our big core lab was the last place I wanted to work at, or, or any lab. I did not wanna do chemistry. So where did I get a job at Mayo? It was clinical chemistry, you know, and I quickly discovered I really enjoyed training, and so I kind of got more experience, tried to, you know, volunteer whenever we had new employees or students come through, or observers or path residents, pathology residents, and just sit down and, and like practice it.

And then when an education specialist position came up, I jumped at that and started teaching chemistry and just That's awesome. I, yeah. - I love how you're highlighting for our listeners, right? I mean, the students that are listening can relate to this. 'cause you're, you're talking about how to think about future proofing your career, as we all know, you know, we might have one vision for how things go and, and we get interested or different opportunities open up.

I think that laboratory professionals absolutely can relate and understand how we might move through and, and also where we might see our, our career ladders. And then also clinicians could be relating to this as well about thinking about how are they future proofing as, as the clinical area changes. You know, we talk about lifelong learning and I think maybe sometimes for the student listeners, maybe it sounds a little bit kind of cliche.

I think absolutely. For some of us, you know, that have been in the game a while, it's like, oh no, this is, this is quite important. I'm curious, what do you see as the challenges to lifelong learning that just, you know, kind of are there making it a little bit difficult each day? - Yeah, I mean, it, it could be uncomfortable. Like you don't know stuff. Like, and, and kind of, if you wanna understand that you, that you need to learn something.

If you think you know everything, you obviously don't, but you have to get yourself out of that Dunning Kruger effect loop and, and understand that, you know, I don't know everything. This is an opportunity to learn.

You know, our example that kind of came up this week in our morning conference, you know, we're, we're going through our patient lists and everything and talking about how these patients are doing and some different testing methodologies because things are coming from different work units and what that means. And then, you know, we're having the learners draw it on the board for us. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And we're kind of adding in our 2 cents. And we had it wrong.

And thankfully we had a polite and learned colleague in our midst, shout out to Corey Dulek. And, and he was like, you know, you guys, like, he gently approached us and, you know, I think you guys have that wrong. I think this is a common misconception. And he righted us on it. It was beautiful.

Adapting to change

And then to your credit, you latched onto it. It was like, oh, we gotta learn this. Like, what a, you know, what, what parts of this are different? I immediately, like right after that meeting was up, ran to the lab that performs that testing, you know, said, show me the instrument. Show me what's going on here. I gotta know this. Like, it was, it was a little gift to me yesterday that I got to go run in there, talk to the education specialist in the lab that I knew was a subject matter expert.

And she explained it to me. She pointed it out. I took some pictures, I ran back to the other people that were in the room with us. I was like, guys, this is how it works. I may have downloaded like the package insert and the FDA 5 0 1 clearance for the, for the instrument to like, wait, how does it shake the plate? And all sort. Yeah. It was a great, - I think our audience can understand and appreciate why I asked you to come and record this podcast.

Right? Because, 'cause one of the things I want to kind of bring out into the open, right, you, you brought up the idea of the challenge can be, it can be uncomfortable. - Absolutely. - And, and certainly I think a lot of listeners can be like, wow, if I was in a, you know, a diverse meeting and talking about something and somebody, you know, said that actually I was completely wrong. And in that case, right, I was talking about something in completely the opposite of how, what the truth was.

Yeah. You know, me too. That might make people, you know, turn red in the face, feel very embarrassed. But like you're saying, you, you like grabbed onto that and took it to a wonderful place, right? Like, what's that magic trick that you do of like, it's not about you getting embarrassed. It's about, oh, here's a gap and I'm gonna, I'm gonna run with this.

'cause it feels like that's part of the skills somehow for a lifelong learner because I think gaps come up for many of us, and sometimes it might be like, and I don't know if it comes from education where, you know, you're getting evaluated and you're like, oh, I don't want them to see that gap. Can you elaborate on like kind of how you, how you take that in a positive light as opposed to a common challenge of, of being very embarrassed?

- Hmm. I mean there were, there's a bit of embarrassment that's always gonna be there. You know, I, I really think it, it may be something I'm born with, but, you know, nature versus nurture kind of always leading on itself. I, I think I, I have really have always loved curiosity and love science and exploration, and I, like, I try to, to instill that in my child, ask questions, you know, I'm, I'm gonna learn something every day whether I want to or not. You might as well enjoy it.

You know, it's, it's definitely, I think interacting with people too really helps, you know, it's, it's fun for me to go talk to somebody and learn something - That actually sparks a thought in my mind in that.

Yeah. As I kind of think, I think most of my kind of times where I've realized that I have a gap, it's been when I'm with people versus, I don't know, maybe I have a, maybe that's being human in that when I'm by myself working on something, I'm not really catching my assumptions that I'm making as well as, you know, when I'm interacting with colleagues. - Absolutely. Nobody's there to challenge you or, or even kind of reflect on the idea and say like, well, couldn't it be this way?

I know you said it this way, but is it always that way? Well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe maybe there are some exceptions to these rules. I do like to embrace the gray area. I really shy away from teaching anything as a dichotomy. And so, you know, whenever I teach, it's probably frustrating to some learners that, like, I'm, I, I say, Hey, this is the way it is almost all the time. It's always X or Y, but guess what Z is out there and maybe, maybe we know about Z and it's just really rare.

Or maybe we don't know anything about Z and there's QRS and they're way out there and they're not even in our brains yet. And in five years, we'll, somebody will discover that

Teaching and learning

and we'll be like, oh wow, paradigm shifts. Let's think about new stuff. - I'm glad you brought up that example, because I think, again, for our listeners in, in medicine, like you bring up it, it is a lot of shades of gray. There's been articles written about the skill of working with uncertainty and just how that is a, a something that is generally woven into the fabric of healthcare. Can you, and, and as somebody who knows your scores from your learners are very high.

I think it's fair to say, you know, you almost have a following of, of students that have come through and worked with you, Bob, like, can you kind of share, like, how do you talk about that gray? Because like you say, learners who are just, just first learning these concepts, whether it's immunohematology, clinical chemistry, right?

Like when somebody's just getting their arms around it, it seems like, you know, that's the goal is, and I think a lot of us maybe listening to this podcast, myself included in some ways, like, we realize the gray, but because we're dealing with a learner, we might be like, okay, you know, XY, black, white, but it, how do you introduce the gray? - That is a very good one.

It, I really, I, I put it right there at the front, which is, which is, you know, definitely I think probably is frustrating to some learners. They're like, Bob, I don't want to know about the extraneous weird stuff or whatever. You know, there's a lot of, most and probably and often and only occasionally and rares that come into my voice or into my speaking. I'm, I, I always avoid never and never say always.

And so I, I really do try to present things though as, you know, dichotomous or, or in good buckets of like known and these are the things you need to know, and hey, we're gonna ask you this on an exam, or you're gonna see this scenario hop pop out in real life, so be ready to, to think about these different things that you need to do. But, you know, sometimes there's gonna be a weird one where it's not X or Y, it's Z and you had to be thinking about it.

Embracing uncertainty

And so just always, you know, come back to the fact that Z's are out there, they're they're gonna come by. - One of the things that I struggle with specifically with that, and, and you know, maybe this is, you know, our plight in in pathology, sometimes I get, I don't know if it's the right way to say it, is too curious about the learner's question about the exception to the rule.

And I have, you know, on occasion been known to go out in in left field with them, you know, maybe more so than is really helpful for somebody that's learning the, the how, how do you, how do you catch yourself, you know, before like totally nerding out or how do you do that kind of bringing somebody back to be like, yeah, it's, it's very interesting, but you know what you really need to focus on right now.

- Hmm. I'm definitely guilty of the same sin of, Hey, let's go down that rabbit hole and chase it until, until we find another world. And - I only ask because I, I'm really working on this in myself as kind of catching and, and realizing, you know, it's like we wanna introduce that shade of gray, but you know, we also can't get distracted. That's not the big - Show. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what's coming up in my brain is, is clinical chemistry stuff.

It's where I've spent most of my adult life and it's probably like weird interferences with different tests. Those are always really cool and like a clinical story that will always capture somebody's imagination. And so, you know, that I, I bring those up a lot, but then I do have to be careful about like, well, you know, all these things can interfere with this assay and that's why we got this crazy result on this patient and they were misdiagnosed or treated inappropriately.

There are all these other things and let's find all the compounds that also behave that same way. Well, you know, maybe let's tamp it down, just kind of look at, you know, the things that cause the most common interferences and, you know, just store that one weird one back in your mind. Save that picture from your cell phone of that weird colored sample and put it on your, on your computer to talk about as a fun story.

But, you know, you don't have to talk about all the crazy interferences, but it's, it's definitely a, a very tough challenge for me to, to pair back all those rabbit holes. - Right. I think it's, maybe there's a little bit of an honesty in this conversation about like being a lifelong learner. There's some of these things like curiosity as kind

Encouraging lifelong learning

of probably a, a, a skill that we can cultivate and you know, to some extent if we go to an extreme with it, it can get in the way of other things. So maybe there's a bit of an honesty of moderation that comes out or that I'm hearing in this conversation. What do you think is, we got our, our listeners here and you know, students, clinicians, laboratory professionals. What are your thoughts on how we can help or coach learners to become lifelong learners?

And, you know, maybe that's a little bit, you know, for ourselves as we're going into the new year, I'm looking for, you know, and how can we kind of spark these thoughts in our, in our listeners? How do you kind of help learners become lifelong learners? - Yeah, so I think definitely at the very beginning of, of connecting with this person and, and learning with them is let them know that you're learning too.

You know, they're, they're learning, but I'm also learning while I'm teaching and, you know, all these, these little things that once I've taught it, it like sticks with me and have them teach you something. So one of the, the fun things that I do, or I think it's fun is like I get learners from all over the country and all over the world. And so, like, oftentimes, so my current pathology resident that I'm training in, she is from Turkey, and my next door neighbors in here are also Turkish.

And so I've always dabbled, like in Turkish language, I have my little Duolingo app on my phone and play with Turkish. And I'd actually set it down a long time ago, but when I got this path resident, I picked it back up and I was like, oh, this is another opportunity to practice Turkish. And so I'm like, Hey, you know, Dr. Ozcan, show me some, some Turkish here, you know, how would you use this phrase?

And she's, you know, she gets these little opportunities to connect her culture, but, and she gets to teach me things. I, you know, it's easy enough with learners too to like, you know, what are your interests? And you know, I'm teaching you this transfusion medicine stuff, but you know, oh, that, that kind of anatomic pathology is really interesting to you. Show me something about it and just let them know that like, we're all in this together. We're all learning.

Having the safe space that, like in our morning conference that I think you're very skilled at, at keeping that environment safe and allowing everybody to ask questions and even, you know, even if they're a dumb question, allowing them to, to ask those and let's go explore those. Like we don't, we, we have to do some work in morning conference, but also we can push it aside. We could get that done, you know, after lunch and let's go explore this new avenue of curiosity, let 'em do that.

- Oh yeah. Have you, I'm thinking about when we've kind of over or run into struggles where somebody is maybe I think about, and to be fair, I'm probably overgeneralizing, but if you were to have a learner who is just like about getting the work done right, and, you know, they're just, they're really good at that, right?

I can think about learners like that where they're, they're phenomenal about getting the work done, but sometimes I can be worried about like, are they really kind of practicing and developing this skill of lifelong learning because I see them, they're just boom, boom, boom. How do you kind of approach that? Hmm. How do you help that person kind of see that, hey, you know, there's value in maybe taking more time in particular areas. - Yeah. - Have you come across that?

- I have come across that, and I'm trying to, you know, with, with our kind of career where we are, a lot of times we're preparing people for board exams and so Yeah. Yeah, I know you're not gonna be a, a transfusion medicine doc or Yeah, yeah, I know medical lab students, you're not gonna work in the transfusion lab, but hey, this is gonna be on your boards. It's an easy cop out solution. Like, you know, that's why we're teaching this. We want you to really succeed at these sort of things.

Let them know that, you know, life does change. You, you may not work in a transfusion medicine lab right after you graduate and you may work in a microbiology lab for five or 10 years, but then the opportunity comes where, oh yeah, now you're, you're gonna have to change your, your positioning to no transfusion medicine, be able to practice it. So kind of, you know, it doesn't work just only like with lab or clinical practice or, you know, your specialty in pathology.

It's life. You know, I'm from Alabama, grew up there. I, you know, thought I was gonna be a, a roadie for, for a band for after high school that fell through. And so I found myself working construction in Alabama in the summer and was like, I need an education. This is, this is not okay. And then, you know, from there, there are just all these different little changes and shifts to like, well, I thought I was gonna do computer science in school.

And so I did that for a while and then, oh no, you know, I fell back in love with biology and, and science kind of traditional science. And so thought I was gonna go that way. My wife needed to change careers and jobs, so no had to change schools. And then I just kind of found myself in lab science. So let let learners know that things change. You know, you, you're gonna, you're gonna have to adapt whether you want to or not, so enjoy it. Love

New Year's resolutions

- It. I hear two things in your answer. One part is kind of highlighting is, you know, if somebody is not kind of taking the opportunity of what's coming across the workload, kind of highlighting why, what is the relevance, why is this important? You have to connect that for them. And I also hear you really kind of connecting us to the top of this podcast again, about the, the why this skill is important for this lifelong learning of we're not sure how our careers are going to progress.

And honestly, maybe one of the fun things in life, it are those unexpected changes that, that bring all of us together. - Absolutely. - All right, I'm gonna put you on the spot here to, to close out. Bob, do you have New Year's resolutions? You're, you're thinking about in your mind? - I'm, I'm not a big New Year's resolution kind of guy. Okay. I'm always, I'm always evolving. Right on.

Alright. I'm always changing. - Maybe could you like, you know, I was hearing about people not having New Year's resolutions, but have quarterly quests. Oh yeah. What are you, what are you kind kind of kick off for the, for the new year. What are you looking forward to in 2025?

- You know, there's a big project that's been hanging over my head that for the last like three years that if I do not get done within the first quarter, I just 2025, I'm, I'm gonna, I don't know, I'll just have to like quit my job and go work at a gas station or something. Like I just gotta do it. So yeah, I'm buckling down after, after Christmas, then I'm buckling down and that project has gotta do it. - Well, I'm bringing you back for that podcast conversation in the future.

That's another interesting challenge is how can we work on long-term projects - Nice. - When there's so many short-term things that come up in life. Absolutely. We've been rounding with Mr. Bob Jackson discussing the critical skill of lifelong learning. Thanks for taking the time with us today, Bob. - Absolutely. It's my pleasure. - And to all of our listeners, thank you for joining us today. We invite you to share your thoughts and suggestions by email to MCL [email protected].

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and until our next rounds together, we encourage you to continue to connect lab medicine and the clinical practice through educational conversations.

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