Introduction

Course Directors

Michael O’Hara, MD

Michael O’Hara is a resident physician in the combined Pediatrics & Anesthesiology residency program at Stanford. His interest in medicine is in the care of critically ill children and adults, and the multidisciplinary art of resuscitating these patients. His focus specifically is in medical education and developing strategies to better prepare healthcare trainees to handle these stressful clinical encounters. His interest in this topic grew out of his own search to find ways to manage the anxiety he felt during intense situations many years ago. Prior to attending medical school, he worked for years as an advanced EMT, a volunteer firefighter and in the emergency department of a busy trauma center and participated in many situations that proved significantly stressful. Throughout his training in medicine, he increasingly observed the similarities that exist between healthcare and other high-risk industries like firefighting, EMS, and the military and aviation. His hope is to adapt some of these unique training strategies to healthcare training in order to improve the learning and experience for trainees around the topic of stress and performance.

Becky Blankenburg, MD

Becky Blankenburg, MD, MPH is the Associate Chair for Education for the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University. Previously an Associate Program Director and then Residency Program Director, she is a national leader in Graduate Medical Education and Pediatric Hospital Medicine. Her educational interests include how to optimize learning opportunities in the clinical environment, helping learners improve through longitudinal coaching and helping learners communicate with patients and families to improve patient understanding, patient satisfaction, and patient safety.