Coaching for Clinician Educators

Clinician educators (CEs) face manifold challenges, such as teaching under increasing clinical productivity pressures, satisfying evolving accreditation requirements, and combatting trainee and faculty burnout. Coaching is currently emphasized at the career poles: academic coaching for students and residents, and leadership coaching for institutional executives and chairs. Yet coaching for CEs can be a strategy for success at any career phase.Within the business world, coaching is commonplace, with robust supportive evidence. In medicine, evidence suggests that coaching can: (1) improve faculty burnout, quality of life, and resilience1; (2) help faculty attain professional goals2; (3) increase academic productivity3; and (4) improve the learning climate of an institution.4Coaching differs from other professional relationships like mentoring, advising, or sponsoring.5 At its core, coaching is a partnership wherein the coachee generates personal goals, discovers strategies to achieve them, and describes markers of success through a process of self-reflection and meaningful action(s). Through powerful questions, the coach provides the structure and scaffolding while the coachee owns the process of self-discovery. The coaching experience is uniquely personal and builds upon a foundation of mutual positive regard, empowerment, trust, and vulnerability. It does not require content expertise or a “senior-junior” dynamic.