ASCEND

ASCEND Program for Early Career Faculty

Advancing Scholarship, Clinical Excellence, Education, and Innovation Development

The ASCEND program is a three-year certificate program designed to provide early career faculty with a structured yet flexible path for professional growth. The program includes workshops, peer feedback, and hands-on projects with an emphasis on clinical excellence, teaching, scholarship and leadership.

Program Structure:

Year 1: Building Core Skills
- Clinical Skills
  1. Peer observation and feedback
  2. POCUS
  3. Addiction medicine – shadowing, curriculum
  4. Expected Practice for most frequently seen conditions
  5. Patient communication – Vital Talk? -> build through palliative care?
  6. Application of problem representation and illness scripts
  7. Site visits to key settings – jail health, LHH, SRO, Jewish Home
- Clinical Teaching
  1. Bedside teaching, feedback techniques, and adult learning principles.
- Evidence-Based Practice:
  1. Introduction to Bayesian decision-making
  2. Introduction to critical appraisal of the literature
- Quality Improvement, Patient Safety, Health Systems
  1. Complete A3 thinking workshop
  2. Join a division, department, or hospital-level committee
- Career Mentorship
  1. Setting career goals, finding mentors, and exploring academic pathways.
- Capstone Project
  1. Start brainstorming ideas and identifying partners/collaborators
Year 2: Application and Growth
- Advanced Clinical and Teaching Skills: Coaching, advanced POCUS techniques, and learner assessment.
- QI and Scholarly Engagement: Designing small-scale QI projects and initiating scholarly work.
- Career Mentorship: Continued guidance on professional goals and promotion readiness.
Year 3: Advanced Topics and Leadership
- Leadership in Academic Medicine
Capstone Project: Initiate, develop and complete a QI initiative, educational project, or scholarly manuscript aligned with Division priority areas