In this episode, we delve into the crucial topic of understanding generational differences in the context of pharmacy education. Our guest expert, Melissa Medina from the University of Oklahoma, brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table, shedding light on why grasping these generational nuances is paramount for preceptors working with pharmacy students and residents.
Tune in to gain a fresh perspective on how everyone can win and learn by engaging across generations.
Host
Kathy Schott, PhD
Vice President, Education & Operations
CEimpact
Guest
Melissa Medina, Ed.D
Interim Dean and Professor
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center College of Pharmacy
Get CE: CLICK HERE TO GET CPE CREDIT FOR THE COURSE!
CPE Information
Learning Objectives
At the end of this course, preceptors will be able to:
0.05 CEU/0.5 Hr
UAN: 0107-0000-24-111-H99-P
Initial release date: 3/20/2024
Expiration date: 3/20/2027
Additional CPE details can be found here.
The speakers have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose.
ChatGPT 3.5 (https://chat.openai.com) was utilized in the planning of this P2P episode.
This program has been:
Approved by the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy as education for Minnesota pharmacy preceptors.
Reviewed by the Texas Consortium on Experiential Programs and has been designated as preceptor education and training for Texas preceptors.
In this episode, we delve into the crucial topic of understanding generational differences in the context of pharmacy education. Our guest expert, Melissa Medina from the University of Oklahoma, brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table, shedding light on why grasping these generational nuances is paramount for preceptors working with pharmacy students and residents.
Tune in to gain a fresh perspective on how everyone can win and learn by engaging across generations.
Host
Kathy Schott, PhD
Vice President, Education & Operations
CEimpact
Guest
Melissa Medina, Ed.D
Interim Dean and Professor
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center College of Pharmacy
Get CE: CLICK HERE TO GET CPE CREDIT FOR THE COURSE!
CPE Information
Learning Objectives
At the end of this course, preceptors will be able to:
0.05 CEU/0.5 Hr
UAN: 0107-0000-24-111-H99-P
Initial release date: 3/20/2024
Expiration date: 3/20/2027
Additional CPE details can be found here.
The speakers have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose.
ChatGPT 3.5 (https://chat.openai.com) was utilized in the planning of this P2P episode.
This program has been:
Approved by the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy as education for Minnesota pharmacy preceptors.
Reviewed by the Texas Consortium on Experiential Programs and has been designated as preceptor education and training for Texas preceptors.
Hello. If you are a regular listener, welcome back. If you are new to preceptive practice, then welcome. We're glad you're here.
Speaker 1:Ce Impact brings you this podcast on the third Wednesday of every month. Each episode engages insightful guests who share resources and ideas to help you improve your precepting practice, become a more effective teacher and mentor and balance your work with these additional but important responsibilities. It was Socrates who said this the children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. How many times have you heard colleagues, or maybe yourself, describe our newest generation of learners with similar words? So often we choose to engage with a new generation with judgment and frustration versus curiosity and excitement about what new skills and ideas they might bring to the table.
Speaker 1:In this episode, we delve into the crucial topic of understanding generational differences in the context of pharmacy education. Our guest expert, melissa Medina from the University of Oklahoma, brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table, shedding light on why grasping these generational nuances is paramount for preceptors working with pharmacy residents and students. Let's listen in, melissa. Welcome. It's so nice to have you here. I really appreciate you taking time. I know as we were preparing for this episode, we were talking about all the many things that are on the plate these days, including standards, changes and projects, but thankfully, spring Break is coming up soon, so that's the good news.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You recently prepared a course for us on teaching across generations and I wanted to dig in with you on that a little bit today. Could you just take a moment to introduce yourself, share a little bit about you and also why this is an important topic for the work and the teaching that you do.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, yes, and thank you so much for the invitation. I'm really excited to be here to talk to you about this particular topic. So I'm Melissa Medina and I am at the University of Oklahoma. I've been here for 24 years and I have a lot of different jobs at the University of Oklahoma College of Pharmacy, which probably is what happens when you've been somewhere for a long time you just have new jobs. So right now I am serving as the interim dean of the college, but I also have retained my other jobs.
Speaker 2:So I am a professor, so I teach throughout our curriculum.
Speaker 2:One course in particular I teach pretty heavily in is clinical communications. I also am the director I'm sorry, I'm the associate dean for assessment and evaluation for our college, so I do accreditation and look at strategic planning and testing in our college. I'm also the director of our PGY1 and our PGY2 teaching certificate programs, the director of preparing future faculty for our campus, which is a year long program for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who want to learn about teaching. And then I'm the co-director of a teaching certificate course for early career faculty on our campus, that is, for interprofessional faculty, so any faculty. We have seven colleges on our Health Science Center campus and I have outreached all of them, so lots of teaching certificate programs that I get to direct and, as a result, looking at generational differences is really important when we talk about learning how to teach and learning how to precept, because we have four different generations in the workforce right now and those can lead to some communication differences as well as just some technology preference differences, and it really can have an impact on student learning outcomes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Well, after you give me that rundown of all the things that you're engaged in right now, I'm even more grateful that you found time to talk to me. So thank you so much. Could we start by? You mentioned that we have four different generational groups in the pharmacy workforce today. Could we just take a high level? Look at each of those, and it's a pretty broad range of folks at this point right, and probably a lot of differences in how they view the world.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, sure. Well, there's actually probably five generations that are alive right now. So we have the silent generation, so those are individuals that are born around 1937 to 1945. Most likely at this point, a majority of those individuals are probably retired at this point and may not be in the workforce, but many of those individuals can still be, could be living with us. Then we have the boomer generation, so those folks are from around 1946 to 1964. Then we have gen X generation, so 1965 to 1980. Millennials around 1981 to 1986 that they were born. And then our newest generation is Gen Z and they were born around the years 1997 to 2012. So this is the newest generation of students coming into our classrooms and into our experiential sites and it's very exciting to have a new generation coming in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, lots to learn, though, as you do that right there a lot different than some of the other generations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you talk about the silent generation, you know we may not see them as much in our academic experience and maybe in the workforce so much. But you know, in some of the work we do with state associations you know they're still maintaining licenses and interacting at you know, with professional organizations and such to. So you know they're still part of the mix. Can you share? You don't need to go too deeply but just share a couple of key characteristics among those, among those groups. You know across those groups, but what different, what differentiates those from each other?
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's some different areas that you're going to see some key differences in. One in particular is when I think about the workplace environment. One is how do people communicate with each other at work? And if you think about the boomer generation and even the Gen X generation, when they first started work, personal computers really weren't a thing that you had a typewriter still, you had a rotary phone or a dial touchtone phone and if you wanted to tell people you were going to go on vacation, you had to send a memo and you printed out for everyone and there was a message board and you posted that up on on the wall for everyone to know that you were leaving for vacation. And it's a lot different.
Speaker 2:Now people have their computer on their phone and they can walk around with information on their telephone, on their iPhone, and information is just at your fingertips. So I think how we communicate with each other is a lot different. I think that it had some implications on how we feel about getting responses. So maybe with boomer generation or Gen X, because you had to mail things in the actual mail, we knew that there was going to take several days for information to get to us. But now information is really available at an on demand and, as a result, I think people expect an immediate response.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing that we see at work is that the downside to that is that you're never truly away from work. At least in previous generations, when you went home you may still have thought about work, but the work you weren't getting bombarded with messages in the evening or information in the evening that you are pretty much expected to respond to, or at least maybe you feel compelled to respond to, because otherwise it's just gonna build up. The next morning when you go into the office you're already behind Right right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a colleague who's a zero inbox sort of guy.
Speaker 2:Wow, and so I know what's gonna be impressive, because they exist.
Speaker 1:I know one, I know one. But, yeah, that need, that we need to be on top of it all the time, and I feel like COVID impacted that even more. I know that when both my I always work remotely, but when my husband was also home working remotely, we were working 24 seven. Yeah, he was in education, I'm in the pharmacy space. We were both in crisis mode and I have to think that that has impacted sort of how we view communication too.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. I do think that the line was really blurred about when does work start and stop when you work remotely. I think that COVID really magnified that. It made it more obvious to a lot of people, instead of just a group that may work more remotely. I think it really called to question of how exhausting it can actually be because you're always thinking about work and you're always working.
Speaker 1:Right, right, talk a little bit about some of the assumptions, maybe, that we make about this new generation, and are those of those assumptions? Are there any that are fair and accurate? And just maybe chat a little bit about how are we perceiving this new generation.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I think that's an excellent question. What I have noticed in my own research is that with every new generation there's always skepticism about it, that there's something wrong with the new generation and they're not as good as my generation. I like to think of it as sort of the disapproving older sibling. I don't know if you are an older sibling, I am, I'm an older sibling, I have a younger sister and, just like any other older sibling, whatever that younger sibling's doing, it's not as good as what you did. They have it much easier, you had it much harder and I think that, regardless of the generation, probably the big theme to come out is that that perception can really pervade any generation.
Speaker 2:So years ago, before the Gen Z generation came into our college classrooms, people were talking about millennials and people were saying negative things about millennials, for example, that they weren't committal, they didn't have a good work ethic. Well, that generation is well entrenched into our pharmacy community, in the pharmacy workforce now, and they're excellent employees as a generation. But we can just come in with a healthy skepticism. So I think that one perception in particular that I have seen linger from the millennial generation and now even more into Gen Z is people's attachment to the phone that they don't want to communicate with people, they just want to be on their phones and sort of invested in their phones.
Speaker 2:I remember being at a state pharmacy organization, ce Talk, giving a program once, and some of the older generation were really concerned and asked for advice about how I was going to stop people from looking at their phones, because they're wasting too much time at work looking at their phone and how to navigate that. And I think that that's a problem that all of us have, regardless of what generation we're from. People again, because the workday is never ending and we're constantly imparted with information, I think that people are very attuned to what's happening on their phone. We're very conditioned to responding quickly and keeping track of things. So it may be a negative perception, but I really do think that we that actually we all suffer from it, but from that constant technology invading our lives and really difficulty putting it down.
Speaker 1:Right right Now. I think that's a. That's a great call out. You know, and I can remember, you know, my early days in experiential education this is tells you how long I've been around for this. You know we were. We would get complaints basically professionalism complaints about students having their phones out on rotation and literally told students they needed to keep them in their pocket, that they shouldn't even be having them out. You know, and and now of course we're moving to how do we use technology responsibly while you're? You know why you're a bedside, why you're on rotation, you know why you're. You know in your, you know residency activities and things like that. So it is interesting. I also love your analogy of the judgmental older sibling. I am also the.
Speaker 1:I am also the firstborn and I have a lot of judgments about my younger brother. Yeah, yeah, nature works. And I was chatting with my daughter, my daughter, my oldest daughter, who has her first, her first baby in the last six months.
Speaker 1:And when they were going through their child you know child classes and preparation for her arrival the instructor very politically correctly said you know you're going to hear some generational, some opinions from generational other generations, meaning you're going to hear some crazy stuff from your parents. And don't do any of that stuff. You know so, like, for instance, putting babies in walkers with wheels who decided that was a good idea.
Speaker 2:But we did it, though, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the new generation has some things up on us for sure. What other factors do you think have influenced this generation? I know we've talked about technology. Certainly they have a different relationship with technology. We talked about COVID. You know what are some other things that you feel has influenced? You know how this generation communicates, how they approach work. You know we talk a lot about work-life balance and wellness and things like that. Certainly, those are languages that weren't really around when we were in school.
Speaker 2:No, oh my gosh. I mean, I think that you are really looking at several things that you just mentioned. One in particular, I think wellness and work-life balance, or work-life integration people like to refer to it. Now, that was not a thing in previous generations. If you worked 24 hours a day and you dedicated your life to work, at the exclusion of other things, that was just your own choice and maybe work didn't really care. Previously, work didn't care about that. It wasn't something that we talked about. But we also didn't talk about mental health. I think not until really the 2000s, when we had the surgeon general declare mental health as an epidemic. So more mental health.
Speaker 2:I think that got people talking about making it, normalizing, talking about mental health and that it's and that people suffer from mental health challenges and that it's okay to talk about it. And that's how we're going to help each other. How are we going to show up for each other? Well, we have to talk about it and be transparent, and I think that COVID in particular, especially for pharmacy, really highlighted the need for having some well-being and supporting each other.
Speaker 2:Just, there were a lot of demands placed on pharmacy. Is pharmacists as a frontline healthcare provider, and oftentimes they're really the healthcare provider. Not only are they frontline, but they're the one. They may be the healthcare provider that people see last and people have gone through the whole healthcare system certainly was very strained during COVID and under normal circumstances and then they end up in pharmacies, especially community pharmacies. Really really hard, I think, for pharmacists to navigate that kind of challenge. People are tired and aggravated and sick and scared about what's happening. I think that's had some big implications that people are still recovering from. We're still understanding what those long-term effects are.
Speaker 1:And some of the older generations. I feel like this is a point of consternation sometimes in communicating with a newer generation is they have language around wellness and stress management and health and personal health and things like that and that I don't think I didn't have in my young professional years and maybe some could argue still don't. But I think that that's something that doesn't come naturally to some of the older generations and then can lead to some perceptions when the younger generation draws boundaries and it's easy to assume that those are work ethic things or problems with work ethic versus not. We could all benefit from this new language around wellness and mental health and things like that.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think it's such an excellent observation. I do agree with you, I think, the older generation. You're not supposed to talk about your personal problems close to keeping them a secret, because then if you do, you're not professional. You're not supposed to talk about your home life, you're not supposed to talk about any kind of challenges that you're facing when you're at work. All you're supposed to do is focus on work. And I think that the newer generation has really done us a great service by normalizing, talking about work life integration and how do you do different things? How do you navigate working and being a human being? How do you navigate those things Family life or just your own personal life? And it is important to talk about. And I do agree with you 100%. I think that there are some real perceptions, that judgmental perceptions that can come out from either side. Certainly, I think if the older generation doesn't talk about things that they're experiencing to a younger generation, it's easy for the younger generation to think that they don't have any types of difficulty with work-life integration.
Speaker 2:It's easy to see like we don't have that problem just because we're not talking about it, when the reality is, we may have as much or more of a problem, especially now that many of us in a, for example, in a Gen X generation are having to care for older family members. Now, certainly, a younger generation can relate to that they're caring for young children, but we're also in a similar situation caring for an older generation.
Speaker 1:Right, that's a great point, because we're in that sandwich generation, right, our children are adults, are becoming adults, and yet we have parents. And yeah, you're completely right, though we grew up, I grew up anyway, I should speak for myself in an era where and I think, particularly as a woman in the workforce keeping those lines clean and not showing those vulnerabilities, and so I agree that I think the newer generation in some ways is doing us a service by opening up those conversations, and we just also need to be open to them.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely I think. I mean, if you really think about some of the history, the boomer generation is the generation that really women started going to work and that's in the 70s. So maybe the Gen X generation was being born around that time. But your boomer generation, and certainly the silent generation as well I don't want to discount them, but really groundbreaking for women in the workforce and kind of paving that way. So absolutely, I think that was a compounded type of problem that not only shouldn't you be talking about your family, but you definitely shouldn't be if you're a woman, because you've just gotten a seat at the table and what's that perception going to be?
Speaker 1:But now, when we look at, pharmacy.
Speaker 2:over 50% of women are pharmacists. Right, and what a change. Yeah, yeah, dramatic, I have to talk about these things, because how do you balance being a family member and being a healthcare provider Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you have to be able to do both.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know in the course that you developed for us, you went into some really great strategies. So what do we do with this information as preceptors of either students or residents or mentors of colleagues at work? What are some strategies, just even high level, that we can keep in the back of our minds as we're working with our new generation of future colleagues?
Speaker 2:I think one of the most important things we can do is really appreciate what our own personal comfort level is with technology and how our learners may differ from that and that we don't. I think that sometimes, when we're in a different generation, we have a different comfort level with technology, maybe even regardless of what generation we're from. That we want to keep that a secret, that it's shameful that if you don't know how to use it that well, you feel embarrassed, or does that make you less of an expert because you're not really sure how to use whatever technology. But I think that one of the things that's really beneficial is that we need to come together as partners so that when you are a preceptor of pharmacy students and you have students come on, they may have a very different comfort level and knowledge of different technology that's available and I think they're a great resource. They can really help train you on some of this new technology and what is making their life easier or what they're used to learning with, and they can help make that possible for you, and I think that's really very important. Makes me think of an example.
Speaker 2:During COVID, we wanted some of our pharmacy students to be able to be exposed to different pharmacy careers and they weren't.
Speaker 2:We were having difficulty getting students into those sites because of COVID restrictions.
Speaker 2:Some of our students were really good with videoing and making different kinds of podcasts and they recorded all these videos for us of different alumni and different healthcare, different, different pharmacists in different healthcare environments, and I just think in the past that may have been a really big undertaking. We would have needed a whole production from the university, tv's courses and we'd have to have the film crew there and they just made it happen really quickly and of high quality. So I think that we can learn a lot from each other and that maybe the new, maybe moving forward as a group and as partners, is really recognizing that we're going to learn from each other, that it doesn't have to be the traditional model that I'm the preceptor, I'm the teacher and I have to teach you and you're the vessel and I am going to help you learn all the things. I think it can be reciprocal, which I think can be rewarding to both people because you're partners and I don't know that we've we always have that mentality that we're partners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. And you know, like, like so many precepting topics, you know so much begins with some transparency, some vulnerability and just, you know, a willingness to have clear communication and some flexibility. So I think that's kind of what we're talking about here, is remembering that maybe we have some things to learn as well.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and technology is changing every day. I think the biggest conversation that I have been exposed to in the past month maybe longer is what are we going to do with artificial intelligence? So chat, gpt and all these different types of artificial intelligence, and how they are going to? Really they're invading our healthcare environment and what does that mean and how are we going to interface with it? I know in the fall, we were updating our syllabus template for our college and maybe we were a little bit more restrictive in our language of you can't use AI to do your assignments, but the reality is we've started to learn, and not just our college. I think everyone in pharmacy is that. Well, I don't know that we can restrict it. It's probably not the way we need to figure out how can we use artificial intelligence, how can we learn from it, and maybe it's going to replace some of the more menial tasks and it's going to free us up to do some of the more cognitive tasks that we want to have done. So the story to be continued.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Well, I've had some really great conversations, in fact, an episode a couple of months back with someone talking about AI, and it's not unlike.
Speaker 1:You know Internet in the classroom. You know from however, many years ago and everyone being so afraid of that. You know I was Google everything, and you know my husband, who is a K 12 educator, would say, well, if they can Google it, let's talk about how to use what they find then, and you know how do you, how do you think critically and how do you? You know what do you do with the information that you gain, and it's not different than what we're. You know, then, then, what we need to, how we need to think about AI. I think, with this generation, they're going to use it. It's, it's there. I used it to help me with an outline for this podcast today. So you know how do we, how do we, yeah, how do we use it to help make our lives more efficient and more effective and and be able to focus on, like you said, more of those cognitive kinds of things where we have pharmacists who are practicing up top their license.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much. I'm excited to have folks dive into the full course because I think there's there's just a lot to learn there and a lot, a lot of me in there. That I think will be helpful to preceptors, whether they're working with residents or working with students or, you know, mentoring other folks. You know at their own practice site. But you're completely right that we have a lot to learn from each other and that that takes some open mindedness and some vulnerability.
Speaker 2:So well, absolutely. When you teach I agree with you you're vulnerable, and when you're learning, you're vulnerable. So let's find common ground so that we can move forward together, show up for each other, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much. I'll go leave you to go back to however many director. Along with interim dean, so. But you've got this and it's almost mid semester, so you're almost to the finish line. All right, well, thank you so much, melissa, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Oh sure thing great seeing you.
Speaker 1:I'm so grateful to Dr Medina for sharing her time and expertise on this topic of generational differences. I've previewed the full course she created for us and encourage you to check it out to learn more about what defines each generation and how we can tailor our teaching in ways that are a win for everyone. I've linked the course in the show notes for this episode. If you have other strategies that have worked well for Gen Z learners, reach out to me at Kathy at CE impact. I'd love to hear from you If you'd like more education on this topic and others. There are many resources on the CE impact website and if you have free access through your affiliated School of Pharmacy or health system, don't forget to claim your CE for this episode. Thanks for joining and we'll see you next time on preceptor practice.