Marie Curie, winner of two Nobel Prizes and 1st female professor at the University of Paris

Last week, the New York Times reported that women are making gains at Harvard, five years after former Harvard President Lawrence Summers made some ill-advised remarks about women that eventually led to his resignation. NYTimes reporter Tamar Lewin describes some of the changes that Harvard has made to recruit more women faculty members, such as:

• A task force on women in science
• Improved childcare facilities
• Grants to help junior faculty pay for childcare on research trips

Lewin also notes that Harvard replaced Summers with its first female president — Drew Gilpin Faust — but that it’s not clear what effect, if any, Faust’s presidency, has had on the gender balance at Harvard. The percentage of women on the Harvard faculty is up past 25% now, an all-time high, though it varies dramatically across disciplines. In addition, Harvard’s academic culture is running into conflicts with a generational culture of younger faculty who want to spend more time with their families.

“Our biggest challenge is this misperception that Harvard doesn’t tenure its own junior faculty,” Dr. [Elena A.] Kramer [biology professor] said. “And because many of our wonderful senior faculty women came up in the ’70s and ’80s and don’t have families, some young women who know they want families might look at them and say, ‘I don’t want that kind of life’ and take themselves out of the pipeline.”

While I’m not sure about her “misperception” point (see this Crimson article), I agree that there is a change of faculty assumptions about career choices taking place.

My question: What can universities — as well as groups like ESN — do to encourage women who pursuing academic vocations?

Before leaving the comments to you, let me recommend our partner ministry, The Well, published by InterVarsity’s Women in the Academy and Professions. They consistently great articles about women, vocation, family, and related topics (which I often borrow for publication in the Emerging Scholars Review).

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1.  All-Nighters: Failing to Fall (Siri Hustvedt, NY Times Opinionator, March 3, 2010):  Do you find your imagination flourishing as you fall asleep, so much so that you fail to fall asleep?  How do you address not being able to fall asleep when you have a lot of work?

2.  Learning From the Sin of Sodom (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times Op-Ed, 2/27/2010): A liberal columnist looks as the influence of evangelicals on U.S. support  for international health, development, and humanitarian activities. It is an interesting comment on the changing tone of many secular commentators toward faith-based organizations. — Link/comment passed along by a post doc at whose Graduate Christian Fellowship (GCF) a Political Theory PhD student shared (among other things) that he didn’t think human rights were possible without a theistic, i.e, Christian framework.

3. Religion Among the Millennials: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently a report in February detailing the religious beliefs and practices of “Millennials” (people ages 18 to 29). Here’s how Pew introduces their report:

By some key measures, Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans. Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than older people do today. They also are less likely to be affiliated than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations were when they were young.

4. InterVarsity’s History on Campus: Two recents events brought InterVarsity’s history on college campuses into the present.  First, one of our earliest campus planters, Grace Koch Belden, passed on to glory at the age of 93. Grace’s story was told on IV’s website in 2007 – she organized Swarthmore’s InterVarsity chapter as a student, then traveled throughout the East Coast as a staff member, touching other campuses you might have heard of – Harvard, Johns Hopkins, places like that.

Second, InterVarsity held its Asian American Ministries Staff Conference this past week. Check out this post on the event from Kathy Khang. Kathy notes that InterVarsity hired Gwen Wong in 1948 . Like Grace, Gwen was a true pioneer, launching student work in Hawaii before moving to the Philippines in 1953 to found the IFES campus ministry there. Praise God for these two faithful women who laid the groundwork for our ministry today.

Books

Tom’s been digging into Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers (Donald Fairbairn, InterVarsity Press, 2009) and finding it to be an engaging combination of Scripture, quotes from the Church Fathers, and author commentary.  Tom will be sharing some quotes in the coming weeks, but if you can’t wait, swing by Google Preview.  HT: Dan and Miller.

Mike is pretty excited about the new book from Gerald McDermott, The Great Theologians. McDermott profiles 11 key theologians in the history of the church, such as Augustine, Origen, Aquinas, Luther, and more recent thinkers like Hans Urs von Balthasar. If it’s as good as his 2007 book, God’s Rivals, it will be a great introduction for anyone who wants to be introduced to these important thinkers and pastors.

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1. Ages and life stages.
2. The question of generational distinctives.
3. Using the World Cafe to encourage good teamwork.

Note:  It’s not necessary for the recommendations to focus on campus ministry.  We’re looking for the best resources available. We’ll use discernment in application to our context.  In addition, please pass along

1. Stories about/models of campus ministry which have intergenerational elements that you have found a blessing during  Critical Junctures in your journey through higher education.
2. Recommendations regarding how to include more intergenerational elements into campus ministry.

Update (3/10/2010, 8:15 am EST).

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Derek Melleby

While I was the Coalition for Christian Outreach’s Jubilee conference a couple of weekends ago, I had the chance to sit down with a few very interesting people and interview them for the blog. One of these was Derek Melleby, the Director of the College Transition Initiative for the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding. With Donald Opitz, Derek wrote The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness. Derek and I discussed the impact that his book has had, his work in helping students transition to college, and the important roles of parents and faculty play in the lives of students.

In the coming days, I’ll be posting interviews with Dallas Baptist professor David Naugle, ESN member and Johns Hopkins MD/PhD student Jimmy Lin, and editor/writer/teacher Alissa Wilkinson.

Derek Melleby: That’s a good question. On one level, there were other books like it that say similar things, and we didn’t think that we were writing a new kind of book. I think of Engaging God’s World [by Cornelius Plantinga], or The Fabric of Faithfulness [by Steven Garber]. There are really helpful books that say very similar things, but we thought what was needed was a book for what I call the 85 percent. Some of those books about being faithful in academics, or world view, or integration of faith and learning seem to be written on a level for people who are already in that game, or already engaged in that way. What we hoped to do with the Outrageous Idea was to reach the average reader, the students who maybe hadn’t even thought about it before, to share that God does care about academics, that your learning matters to God.

Being faithful to Christ means little things, like paying attention in class, doing your work with integrity, and caring about the things you’re learning. I had a student who didn’t realize that I was the co-author of the book, but just saw the book on the book table. She picked it up, showed it to a friend of hers, and said, “This book saved my life!” Now, I know that’s a little exaggerated, and she was that kind of person, it seemed. But she said, “You know, I take so many classes, and they just seem boring to me, or I just do the least amount of work to get the best grade that I can get. This book reminded me to take it more seriously. Sometimes, I’ll be sitting in a class, and I’ll think, ‘Why do we have to learn this? How will I ever use this in the real world?’ And the Outrageous Idea made me stop and say, ‘No, I’m here for a reason; God has me here to learn these things for a reason.’” So, it helped her to take learning more seriously.

Mike: In ESN, we’re trying to get students to think about becoming a professor. That’s a great point about the 85 percent. There’s sometimes an assumption that students are going to try their hardest “just because.” I’ve even known a professor who said he was a C student as an undergrad, and then something clicked for him after he graduated. He went back and got a Masters, then got a PhD. Now he’s a professor, and even started a whole department at his new university. Whereas when he was an undergrad, no one would have ever thought he could do that, or even finish college.

Derek: That’s the kind of thing I mean. It’s part of my own story. I was a part of a good college ministry, but I was living this compartmentalized life, and not realizing it. I had a really good campus ministry, where we were asking really good questions about the Bible, about theology, even about the integration of faith and culture to some degree, and then I had my classroom experience, where I was asking separate kinds of questions in there. I studied political science, so I was thinking about politics and government, and the nature of man, and what it all meant for how we go about doing politics. For whatever reason, unless you’re intentional about it, you never bring those two worlds together. I’m doing discipleship and evangelism on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and then I’m going to class. One person said, “Worship and scholarship are like two ships passing in the night.” What we hoped is this little book can just invite students to bring those two worlds together.

Mike: Is there anything that you would add to the book if you were rewriting it today, or if you had a second edition coming out?

Derek: That’s a good question. Each chapter concludes with two or three other suggested books. Like I said a minute ago, there are other books that can take it to the next steps. There are other good resources out there. We really thought the gap in literature was a basic level invitation for students to just think differently and more faithfully about learning. I think it accomplishes that well, and then you can go on to explore those other titles. I’m working on a book right now which is even a step further back. It’s the book you read before The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness, the seven questions to ask before you go to college. Don’s been talking about maybe doing the book that you would read after the Outrageous Idea as you exit college. So, this little book I’m working on will be the book you’d read gearing up for college. The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness would be the book that would kind of shape your college experience. And then, maybe, another little book as you leave college and go out into the world.

Mike: I can really see a need for that. The transition into college is tough, which makes a good segue to what you do with CPYU. Why don’t you tell a little bit about what you do with their College Transition Initiative.

Derek: The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding is a youth ministry organization that studies youth culture. It’s been around for 20 years. Walt Mueller started it, when he was a youth pastor at the time. His church was noticing the cultural generational gap. The parents in his congregation were saying, “We’re having a hard time relating to our kids for whatever reason.” It was the early ’80s. MTV was just coming on the scene. Teenagers as a viable market was really taking the world by storm. So, that was creating all kinds of teenage culture, youth culture, youth worlds, and parents were just not exactly sure how to do it.

The parents of this congregation saw that Walt was able to connect with the students in a way that they weren’t able to connect. They took it upon themselves to give Walt some time to do a sabbatical and to just study youth culture and then come back to the congregation and help parents think about the world of teenagers. His first Sunday School class called “Understanding Today’s Youth Culture” had maybe 10 people in it. Then, the next week it had 30. By the time it’s over there’s, like, 200 people. And they’re coming from other churches, so he developed some curriculum and writing and resources to help parents connect with their kids. Then, after a few years of being youth pastor and doing these seminars and things on the side, he decided to do it full-time.

CPYU has been going on for 20 years, but a few years ago Walt had been hearing from other people that this issue of college transition or this time just isn’t going well for many students. The statistics were thrown out about students that leave the faith; those that grow up in the church and then go off to college and leave the faith. I wish those statistics were stronger than they could be, but they’re anecdotal and I think we just know that it is a time when students make major decisions about whether or not they’ll take ownership of the things that they believe. So, there’s that element to it, but in general, culturally, fewer and fewer students are really making the most of the college experience. You know, only 52% of students who enter college graduate within six years. It’s not just a faith thing. It’s a cultural thing. Students aren’t transitioning well to college. So, Walt thought, “Could CPYU be in a position to provide resources for students and parents?” He asked me to come on to explore that. I started about four years ago, and the main result is a seminar that I give. I go around to churches and schools and camps and conferences and present on making a successful transition.

Mike: From the seminar, I’m sure there is a lot that you could tell us, but what are two or three things that parents can do?

Derek: What I tried to do [in designing the seminar] is that I didn’t want to repeat what a good guidance counselor would do or even good parenting at this time. I didn’t want to have a seminar that helps students decide what college to go to. The other thing is, as you walk into a room, you don’t know where people are in the process. You don’t know if they’ve already decided on a college, if they’re going to a Christian school or a secular school. I also didn’t want to repeat what a good orientation program will give them — how to relate well with roommates, or how to navigate some of the safety concerns of college.

So, I thought, “What can I do where it would hit the majority of the people that come into a seminar like mine?” The first thing it does is gets the parents and students together. My seminar is successful if I open a door. The best feedback I get in evaluation forms is when the parent says to me, “I knew I needed to have a conversation with my son or daughter about something, and this just provided a third voice to speak into it. You opened the door to have that conversation.”

That’s some of the theory behind it, but, it’s really the four questions to ask before you go to college. If you don’t take a proactive approach and wrestle with these questions now, you run the risk of having these questions answered by other people when you get there. The first question is, “Why are you even going to college?” You know college becomes this assumed next step after high school. It’s funny, when you read the research about why students don’t transition well to college or make the most of the college experience, almost all of it comes back: because they have no idea why they’ve gone in the first place. If you throw thousands of people together in a confined area who have no idea why they’re there, and haven’t really thought through their goals and intent — that’s why we have some of the [problems] that we have. I have them think through, “why are you going?” The world says you go to college to get a degree, to get a job, to make money, that’s where college fits within the world’s story. Then I say there’s another story you can be shaped by, the biblical story. If you’re shaped by the biblical story, college would be about developing your mind, discovering your gifts, and discerning God’s call. One writer says, “College is a calling to prepare for further calling.” So, I talk about college as an opportunity to increase your service ability for God. If you go to college with that kind of 3-D mindset, then you’ll have more to serve God and your neighbors with after school.

The next big question is, “What do you believe?” That just gets at these are the years your central convictions will be shaped. For many of us, our faith is kind of “outside in.” You know we shake our head at the right time and raise our hand when it’s appropriate, and we,get rewarded for those things. Then you go off to college and now is the time where you have to say, “Will I believe this stuff?” I try to have an honest conversation about what doubt and faith look like in the Christian life and how it comes together, and try to leave them with [the idea that] God is not surprised by your doubts or your questions, and to seek truth.

Then I talk about “who are you?” I encourage them to think about identity formation. It’s so easy to find our identity in external things, instead of internal/eternal things that you’re a child of God. So I talk about where some of those temptations will come, during the college years. Finally, very practically, [I end with the question] “With whom will you surround yourself?” Think about the community that you’ll have, the friends that you’ll make; how to make good friend choices, and especially the importance of Christian community, campus ministry groups, and local church.

Mike: In InterVarsity, we often work with Christian faculty who are at secular universities. I think it’s safe to say that all of them have a strong concern for students. We’ve found that’s one of the distinguishing marks between a Christian professors and other professors, especially at research universities. Is there anything that a Christian professor can do, to help students make that transition to the university? Anything practical that they can do that would fit well within what they’re already doing as a faculty member?

Derek: One of the best, most memorable experiences I had as an undergrad, was when faculty would open their homes and invite students over. Now, the ones that I’m thinking about weren’t probably motivated by Christian convictions, but they just cared for students. That made a huge difference. I remember those professors the most, and I had genuine, serious conversations with them about things, more than what we were learning about, but bigger issues about life. Some of the best professors that I can think of, are people who meet with students, especially in the home. I think there is something about providing a place, for students, because they’re around people their own age all the time. They’re away from home: your hospitality can be a wonderful ministry opportunity for people.

Mike: That’s a great word. As soon as you said that, I immediately thought of some faculty I know who have done that, and have really made that an intentional practice, to open their homes and be hospitable. That’s all the questions I have – thank you, Derek.

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1. Peace is Patriotic: Anabaptists and the National Anthem (By Duane Shank, Sojourners, 3/3/2010): Did you attend a college sporting event where the national anthem of the host country was not played? Goshen College, a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition, has just started to play an instrumental version and it’s caused quite a stir. For Goshen’s perspective visit National anthem dialogue and implementation to continue at Goshen College (Press Release by President Jim Brenneman, 2/17/2010). Are they becoming conservative Christian or enculturated/liberal as they seek to be hospitable to guest teams?  HT:  Fred.

2.  Translating Pain: Immigrant Suffering in Literature & Culture by ESN member Madelaine Hron (assistant professor in the Department of English and Film at Wilfrid Lauriern University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) has just been has been shortlisted for the prestigious The Raymond Klibansky Prize, for Best Book in the Humanities published in Canada. For more on the nomination click here.  For ESN’s 1/22/2009 pre-release author interview visit here.

3. What do younger faculty want? According to Harvard’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), they don’t want long hours, constant mobility, or career success at the expense of a good family and personal life (Chronicle, March 4). This is based on interviews with 16 “Generation X” faculty members at a variety of schools.  The full report can be downloaded from COACHE’s website as a PDF.

4. The State of the Humanities: Inside Higher Ed reports the latest results of the Humanities Departmental Survey.  The full report warrants closer reading, but IHE’s summary echoes earlier articles from ESN about the state of the humanities:

At a time when many humanities professors are worried about the future of the tenure track, the data in the report will only add to those concerns — especially because it predates the freezes on tenure-track hiring that have been instituted at so many colleges. Generally, the fields that have the highest percentages of tenured faculty members are among the smallest disciplines. And while the percentages vary, use of non-tenure-track faculty members is significant throughout. Further, the data back up a point made increasingly by activists for adjuncts: that significant numbers of academics are working full time, off the tenure track.

5. Alan Jacobs Makes Mike Jealous: Maybe it’s a bad idea to get a PhD in the humanities, but Alan Jacobs (English, Wheaton) recently reminded me [Mike] why I have always loved the scholarly study of literature.  On his New Atlantis blog Text Patterns, Jacobs recently reported the completion of his latest book project, a new critical edition of W. H. Auden’s important long poem The Age of Anxiety. Jacobs writes:

I have worked as hard on this project as I have ever worked on anything, and at the moment I am pleased and proud. There’s something especially rewarding about doing all this work — visiting libraries and archives, working through vast tracts of mostly useless materials, trying to decipher Auden’s terrible handwriting, comparing multiple editions of the poem, reading much of what Auden read as he wrote the poem, carefully marking up the typescript in order to preserve the poem’s intricate formatting — not for the sake of my own critical reputation, but in order to make the work of a poet I love more useful and accessible and comprehensible. I can truly call this a labor of love. But boy, am I tired.

If my GRE were up-to-date, I would have sent off three applications by the end of that paragraph. The book will be published later this year by Princeton UP, I assume as part of their Auden critical editions series.

Bonus:

Donald Kraybill, PhD, (highlighted in Amish Grace & Pop Culture) teaches on The Upside Down Kingdom.

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Amish Grace Cover

Film depicting Nickel Mines shootings questioned (Cindy Stauffer, Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, 03/01/2010) ran on frontpage in south central PA the day after Donald Kraybill, one of the authors of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, spoke for the Emerging Scholars Network in partnership with Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ. If you’re interested in learning more about the Amish, I’d encourage you to

• listen to Kraybill’s 2/28/2010 presentation on The Riddle of the Amish (the audio begins with my brief introduction of Kraybill).
• pick-up a copy of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy — coming out in paperback later this month.  Note:  the Amish Grace web site is a rich resource and All author royalties are going to Mennonite Central Committee for their ministries to children.
• visit the Amish Studies web site — maintained by the Young Center for Anabaptist & Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College

How should followers of Christ respond to this popular culture depiction of the Gospel, academic research, and a minority group which desires as a people of God to be separate from popular culture.

Should we

• contend that certain forms of media can never do justice to events/material such as what is found in Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy
• post comments on the film’s website and other locations which encourage dialogue
• stand up against what appears to be a misuse of film rights to the title of a well researched book, it’s content, and those whom it represents
• turn the other cheek by neither entering the public fray nor watching the film
• watch/discuss the film
• watch/discuss the film only after we’ve read up on the Amish or are led in consideration of the film by someone who can provide insights regarding the Amish
• seek to produce more films/documentaries closer to the facts/truth, e.g.,
  The Amish: Back Roads to Heaven (which ends with a brief summary on the Nickel Mines tragedy), The Amish: How They Survive, The Amish: A People of Preservation
• other?

Note: Lifetime’s website for the upcoming film is here and the trailer can be found here.

PS.  ESN’s Week-in-Review will hit the web on Saturday morning.

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1. How do we use social media appropriately to
   1. build community?  Note:  How does social media influence our/your definition of community or the various forms of community in which we find ourselves?  The seminar will take the direction of building local, face-to-face campus communities, but I’m also interested in the other forms of community, such one finds in the Emerging Scholars Network.
   2. invite others to engage with our community?
   3. engage others with ideas we are discussing in our communities?
2. What are some do’s and don’ts for healthy, appropriate and effective use of technology?
3. What’s available? What’s changing? How do we make decisions?
4. How do we make decisions about the use of technology when engaging with audiences of different generations in our ministry?  Note:  Please don’t skip.  Due to the overall conference theme, it has particular relevance.  :-)  Feel free to also share How you make decisions about the use of technology when engaging with audiences of different generations in higher education?

Calling out to the community/network for input. …

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Heaven - I mean, a used book shop

We’ve previously asked for your recommendations for the best books for undergraduates (which had a tremendous response) and best books for graduate students (who must be harder to shop for). Thus, it only makes sense for me to ask:

What are the best books for new faculty?

If you need help getting started, here are a few categories:

• Practical advice books
• Books to take your theology and spiritual life to the next level
• Books on “culture making” (there’s a leading category!), education, or other aspects of faculty life
• Comfort or counsel for those who are facing disappointment with their career
• Books about building relationships

Any suggestions?

Photo: Parnassus Book Services, Cape Cod, MA, by Lochaven via Flickr. Click for a larger image.

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1.  Stand Up While You Read This! (Olivia Judson, NY Times Opinionator, 2/23/2010):  an evolutionary biologist warns her reader:

Your chair is your enemy.  It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you. …

Probably much easier to address by those who work in labs, go into the field, pace as we think/present.  Some tips in the article for those who sit a lot.  Any to add?

2.   Academic Bait-and-Switch, Part 6 (Henry Adams, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/25/2010).

… Today I wince at my naïveté. Studying literature doesn’t guarantee moral improvement any more than studying chemistry, economics, or plumbing does. I should have accepted that in my first year of graduate work at Elite National University, because the evidence was all around me, but I clung to my childish belief in the power of literature. In my second year, when my fellow teaching assistants elected me their representative to the first-year-composition committee, I even had a notion that I could help change the program for the better. …

The foundation of one’s vision for daily life, let alone culture making, when entering the messy milieu of any profession is vital.  What is yours?  Note: keep in mind that Henry Adams, the pseudonym for a professor of English at a liberal-arts college in the Midwest, shares his perspective in the Bait-and-Switch series.

3. Before you follow the link, take a guess on What They’re Reading on College Campuses (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/25/2010) or maybe I should make the question What  bestsellers did Barnes & Noble and the Follett Higher Education Group sell in January 2010?  Where do you draw your up and coming must reads, someplace like the Weekly Book List (Compiled by Nina C. Ayoub, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/22/2010)?

4. Do you practice the Examen? From our colleagues at The Well, Ann Boyd has written an excellent introduction to the Examen. This classical spiritual exercise was created by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and it has served Christians from many traditions well over the centuries. If you journal already, or you are looking for a new way to reflect on your life and God’s work, check out Ann’s article.

5. New website for Books & Culture: ESN partner Books & Culture has launched a new website. If you like what you see, why not head over the ESN Subscription Discounts page and subscribe to B&C for only $5 a year?

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As you journey through Lent, join me in meditating upon living out the Greatest Commandment by taking some time to

• consider how loving your neighbor fits in relationship to being/following Jesus the Christ in one’s vocation/discipline.
• acknowledge, confess, and release when/where/how you have fallen short … Note: we are not perfect.   We will err at times in our inter-personal interactions, spelling, presentations, research, articles, web posts/comments, patient care, advice, etc.  But when we purposefully hide mistakes to our own benefit, point fingers at others to avoid the consequences, or turn frustration with our self into agitation with others, we encounter sin and the evil one coming forth to destroy all it can.
• seek reconciliation in broken relationships.
• be intentional about blessing those whom you’ve been called to serve through the resurrection power of Jesus the Christ.

Would enjoy reading some comments from those outside of the Medical profession as to how you might translate these thoughts from a Medical professor to your place in higher education (Note: the below section is just an excerpt from a larger presentation which included much more material).  Also would you have any resources to recommend in addressing mistakes and/or offering apologies?  From those within the Medical profession, any points to add?

When we are at risk of committing errors

• Tired:  know your limits
• Under the influence (eg., alcohol, drugs, over the counter drugs)
• Competing demands
  • Work stresses
  • Family stresses (Note to those married:  open communication between family members is very important)
• Practicing outside the usual scope of practice/expertise or attempting a procedure after it’s been awhile since one’s regular practice of it

Personal feelings associated with errors

• Guilt
• Shame
• Fear of loss of reputation
• Vulnerability
• Fear of criticism

These events can leave emotional scars.  How to deal with a mistake

• Acknowledge a mistake has been made
• Find an open heart/mind to discuss the situation in confidence (e.g., mentor, attending physician, colleague, administrator, pastor, counselor)

Steps to address an error/mistake

1. Acknowledge
2. Explain
3. Express Remorse
   1. Pray for patient and their family
   2. Ask Forgiveness
4. Reparation

Minimizing our risks for errors

• Pray each day for wisdom, understanding, and caring as we serve our patients.
• Avoid situations that will degrade our performance
  • Lack of sleep
  • Alcohol, drugs, over the counter drugs
  • Don’t work when impaired with illness
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help, assistance, advise
  • The only dumb question is the one you didn’t ask.
• Be wary — we are human, and will err.

Resources for those in the Medical community:

• Apology in Medical Practice: An Emerging Clinical Skill, Aaron Lazare, JAMA, 9/20/2006, Vol. 296, No. 11, 1401. Note: Extract, i.e., first 150 words, available free at the above link.
• The Art of Apology: When and How to Seek Forgiveness, Family Practice Management, July/August 2007, 44-49. Note: Text available free at the above link.
• Medical Mistakes:  A Workshop on Personal Perspectives, The Oncologist, Vol. 6, No. 1, 92-99, February 2001. Note: PDF available free at the above link.

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