"A sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create." Mahatma Gandhi

The ACC welcomed 24 cardiac care clinicians from around the country to its Heart House headquarters in Washington, DC, this past Spring as part of the ACC's Rick Nishimura, MD, MACC, and Patrick T. O'Gara, MD, MACC, Emerging Faculty Leadership Academy (EFLA).

The immersive, three-day education experience aims to provide mentorship and training for early-to-mid career academic cardiologists, open doors for active participation in ACC education efforts, and cultivate new clinician educators and leaders for the College.

The EFLA brings together Fellows and Associate Fellows from the ACC who serve as full-time academic faculty. The candidacy of each EFLA applicant must be supported by a nomination from their department chair or a Fellow of the ACC with firsthand knowledge and experience with the candidate's teaching ability. The Emerging Faculty Planning Committee selects participants based on their talent and dedication to teaching.

The ACC first developed the EFLA Program in 2005 to create a sustainable network of leaders to support the ACC's education mission. As founding leaders of the program, Nishimura and O'Gara became its namesakes in 2018. A grant from the Michael Wolk Heart Foundation, along with a direct investment from the ACC, provides the course tuition, hotel accommodations and meals.

We had the privilege of being part of this year's program, which, although several of us have been participants of various educational and leadership programs, stands out for its subject matter content and engaging delivery and sets a high bar for future educators in cardiology.

Setting the Stage

During a virtual session held before the in-person course, participants were divided into groups of four or five, with each group assigned a content area within cardiovascular medicine.

Each group was required to craft an education session to address knowledge gaps in their content area. Increasing the challenge, a deliberate effort was made to assign topics to participants outside their own subspecialty.

This project proved to be the foundation for our experiential learning during the onsite course. Collaborating with new colleagues to succinctly, but effectively, convey learning objectives as a team stretched our usual approach to educational endeavors.

Understanding that we would be evaluated by accomplished ACC leaders and our peers added to the motivation and perhaps a healthy amount of anxiety. On arrival at Heart House, all participants immediately received personalized feedback in one-on-one sessions with the course leaders, which covered everything from defining learning objectives to creating engaging presentations.

Anxieties eased with such immediate, honest feedback. We learned strategies to enhance presentations using visual and technical components, techniques on improving verbal communication and audience engagement, and many simple but highly effective nonverbal approaches such as posture and eye contact. We had an opportunity to revise our presentations based on the feedback before presenting our group topics to the entire cohort the next day.

The Learning Begins

A remarkably effective lesson on moderating a session was presented by Salim Virani, MD, FACC, who emphasized that the primary goal of any educational endeavor is learner education, not showcasing the presenter.

Using this as a guiding principle, we learned best practices for creating a sense of ease and comfort between the speaker and the audience allowing for increased engagement and learning. We found this to be an important lesson as we prepare to be leaders in education in our own institutions, the ACC and beyond.

Our EFLA cohort was a diverse group of clinical care cardiologists from all over the country, representing a variety of races, ethnicities, genders, ages and backgrounds: a true representation of the ACC.

The importance of diversity and inclusion as an educator for the ACC was emphasized by ACC Scientific Session leaders Katie Berlacher, MD, MS, FACC, and Julie Damp, MD, FACC. They delivered concrete advice on creating inclusive presentations; tips for identifying and increasing awareness of gaps in our clinical knowledge that impact diverse patient populations; and highlighted strategies for enhancing representation in education activities.

Together, our EFLA cohort – future leaders in education, presenters, moderators, session chairs, committee chairs and course directors – learned how to combat bias as an ACC faculty and educator.

A phenomenal session on psychological safety in learning environments was presented by Anu Lala, MD, FACC. As clinical educators, we are focused on optimizing patient care, as well as the vital task of educating our clinical learners and creating competent physicians of the future.

This session emphasized the need to address cognitive load to optimize learning and functioning within the quadrant of psychological safety. These efforts ensure the learner feels safe to learn and collaborate – they feel included in the conversation and empowered to challenge the educator and enhance their own learning process.

Other sessions focused on the use of case-based teaching and leveraging audience interaction, using evidence-based strategies for learning "stickiness," and describing strategies that improve knowledge retention and learner engagement, including using kinesthetic activities like writing, purposeful storytelling and serving the learner by enthusiasm.

By the end of our time at Heart House, we learned the value of going on a "content diet," providing "bite-sized" education that focused on serving our learners.

A fireside chat with the ACC leaders of the EFLA proved to be one of our most meaningful events. The podium and PowerPoints were replaced with a virtual fireplace and a genuine discussion about their experiences in the ACC. Their passion for education inside and outside the College was tangible and inspiring.

Hearing the stories of their own personal and professional trajectories, the obstacles and rewards along with their motivations to continue to be phenomenal leaders in education, was an extraordinary summative experience, inspiring the entire cohort to become leaders in education too.

Delivering on a Commitment

The EFLA program plays a vital role in developing cardiologists into effective and impactful educators, within their native institutions and on the national and international stage.

Meeting like-minded educators, creating new networks across institutional borders, and expanding opportunities to learn, collaborate, mentor and foster relationships independent of our practice setting was a refreshing and much-appreciated experience.

This course represents ACC's commitment to creating leaders in cardiology education and beyond. In this way, the College is the embodiment of the "good leader" of which the great Mahatma Gandhi spoke. The EFLA Class of 2024 is grateful for this phenomenal opportunity and encourages early-career faculty to participate.

Thank you, ACC!

Keywords: Cardiology Magazine, ACC Publications, Leadership, Mentors, Faculty, Education