Episode Transcript
Interviewer: It's AAMC Learn Serve Lead 2025, and time for the opening night reception. We are in San Antonio, home of the River Walk and the Alamo, and this year at the AAMC we're broadcasting at the University of Utah Health explore, find, forge Pathways booth, and it's a good time. You guys are bouncing to the music. So let's find out who we've got with us.
Tom Hurtado, EdD: I'm Tom Hurtado, senior director of student affairs and professional identity formation at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah.
Noah Danesh, MS3: My name's Noah Danesh. I'm a third-year medical student at the USC Keck School of Medicine.
Suchita Kumar, MS4: I'm Suchita. I'm a fourth-year medical student at Vanderbilt University going into OB/GYN.
Interviewer: Alright, I love this. Tom from University of Utah Health, how'd you connect with these two? I mean, they look like great people—
Suchita Kumar, MS4: I'd hope so.
Interviewer: So maybe the question I should ask is, why did you connect with Tom?
Tom Hurtado, EdD: We are always interested in showcasing the student experience in multiple contexts, and in this context, we worked with the AAMC on a panel about coaching.
Interviewer: You guys were on a panel together? How'd it go?
Tom Hurtado, EdD: It was amazing. I thought it was really good.
Suchita Kumar, MS4: It was great to be a part of, but I feel like we need to ask the audience how it went. I hope that they would think it was as good as we think it was.
Interviewer: Right. Are you ever in one of those situations where, after you do a presentation, you're like, "How come nobody's coming to ask questions?" Sometimes you go and everybody flocks to the stage.
Suchita Kumar, MS4: Tons of people came in later to ask questions, which I thought was great. I went to a session right after, and someone recognized me and was asking me more questions. I'm like, "Wow. Now I'm a little local celebrity here."
Interviewer: Let's set the stage, Tom. What was this presentation about?
Tom Hurtado, EdD: The first thing we wanted to do was break the mold talking about coaching. The natural pattern is that you get a didactic presentation with a lot of slides about coaching. But in this case, we brought up people from three different institutions: a coach, a faculty coach, and a coachee. Noah and Suchita are both coachees, so we had their coaches there. Instead of talking informationally about it, we had an amazing showcase of the actual relationships in the session.
Interviewer: That's cool. How did you demonstrate that? Did you have a little mini-coaching session?
Tom Hurtado, EdD: We did a lot of storytelling. We wanted to share things that actually happened, things that have beena part of that coaching relationship, how it began, how it was nurtured, and how that has impacted the professional identity formation of the coachee.
Interviewer: Noah, how has it impacted you?
Noah Danesh, MS3: Coaching has been one of the most fundamental things in my experience at medical school. Something I touched on in the panel is, having someone there who can support you longitudinally throughout your medical school experiences is really valuable. They start to understand your unique, individual interests.
Interviewer: What was Noah like before coaching versus after?
Noah Danesh, MS3: Reflecting on that is why I like this panel because it allowed me to reflect on Noah before and after. My coach, Dr. Stephanie Zia, she really helped me support my passions and build my medical school journey. Before, Noah thought he was working to be a doctor and he wanted to be the most compassionate or best possible doctor he could be. But after coaching, what I've been learning is that I can pull in so many other aspects of my interests to help me accomplish those goals of being a compassionate and strong doctor for my patients.
Interviewer: Did you ever imagine when you went to med school that coaching was going to be part of your curriculum or your journey?
Noah Danesh, MS3: When we think about med school, we think about lectures, anatomy lab, rotating in the hospital... A lot of these softer skills that you learn from coaching or leadership development are things we don't talk about in the general idea of medical school. That was something that surprised me and something I'm very fortunate exists at USC.
Interviewer: What would Noah after coaching tell a first-year about coaching if they're like, "I don't know, this seems like kind of a waste of time. I'm stressed about my classes, etc."
Noah Danesh, MS3: I love that. I was just talking to some first-year students about that. Sometimes coaching can seem challenging. It's that extra dedication of time. There are mandatory meetings, but there are also informal meetings, so students and faculty are making an investment in time. But when I talk to them about what it did for me, the power of storytelling is so prominent. I started telling them small stories about how it impacted me, and a few stories in, they started to recognize how much it can impact them as long as they participate and really engage with the process. They can really get a lot out of it.
Suchita Kumar, MS4: Coaching has been an integral part of my experience in med school throughout all four years. It's nice that we get to be exposed to all sorts of different advisors: specialty advisors, college mentors, and our dean. A lot of people are there to support you. What I've found with my portfolio coach experience is that it's someone who captures the full breadth of whatever you might experience in med school, whether you're having academic concerns or personal challenges or bigger questions about what I want to do in my life as a physician. Dr. Sarma, who's my portfolio coach, helped me with every aspect of it.
Interviewer: Your story shows me how important it is to understand your journey, your path, where you were, where you're going, and where you are right now. Almost to be a record keeper of it, even. Talk about that aspect.
Suchita Kumar, MS4: You've really hit on something important. What it's making me think of is when you're going through med school, you have friends who stick with you the whole way. Teachers and professors come in and out, but one of the strengths of having a coach throughout all four years is that they're almost a peer in the sense that you get to think of them as a friend. But they have this life experience they're able to share with you that maybe your peers aren't able to. When I think of Dr. Sarma, she offers me a lot of insight on what to expect in my future career, but she's still able to give me that sounding board advice—stuff that friends are able to give. I think it's a unique perspective that you maybe don't get unless you have a coach.
Interviewer: Coach versus mentors, what's the difference to you? Is there a place for both, or is one superior?
Tom Hurtado, EdD: These definitions are sometimes confusing for people. The students end up having what I like to call a matrix of support, which means I might have someone who is a mentor for a specific thing. I might have a research mentor, I might have a specialty mentor, and I'm going to ask that person specific questions that help me get from point A to point B. The thing about a coach is that you can ask, "Who am I? What are my values, and what are your values, and what does this career look like? I don't have to have the same specialty as you." A coach is someone who invests in you as a whole person—a professional but also a human, you know? Like Suchita was saying, "How can I navigate the layers of life and have somebody there who's watching out for me and who I feel very comfortable sharing whatever it is personally and professionally that's challenging me or exciting me or creating more curiosity in me."
Interviewer: Noah, a question for you. At the end of the day, you're investing a lot of time. What percentage do you think you invest? In this kind of professional development with yourself?
Noah Danesh, MS3: Coaching is not as big a time commitment as it might seem, relative to the benefit you get from it. It's a very low investment of time, based on what you can get out of it. We have formal meetings at USC throughout, both the pre-clerkship and clerkship time. Those are just quick check-in meetings, 20 minutes. We do some prep work beforehand to help us reflect prior to coming to those meetings. So I wouldn't say it's a significant time investment—it's more of the ability to reflect on what's happening throughout. That's an ongoing thing that always occurs. Those other meetings you can schedule with your coaches informally are sometimes even more important than some of those formal reflection meetings.
Interviewer: Five years from now, if Noah had not had this coaching experience versus, how is he going to be fundamentally a different health care provider?
Noah Danesh, MS3: I like looking into the future as well. I think I would probably be less involved in some other things. The story that I talked about during the panel was about journalism. I'm a big fan of journalism. I love writing articles. During medical school, of course, usually people aren't doing that. But my coach helped me continue exploring that, and I've been able to keep that thread throughout medical school. I started in college at the Daily Bruin, and now in the Daily Trojan, I write articles. I think in five years, the fact that I was able to do this throughout my medical education career would allow prep me to do the best that I can in both of my interests, in journalism and as a doctor.
Tom Hurtado, EdD: What I find so powerful about it is that the coach uncovers this interest in journalism just by actively listening and taking an interest in the coachee. They encourage someone like Noah that you don't have to just focus everything on medicine—you can hold onto yourself and your interests. That's part of being a whole person and a physician. This idea of seeing yourself—a version of yourself—through a coaching conversation is what Suchita was saying. The sounding board: how powerful is it to have a person there who's witnessing that you have these interests, encouraging you as you grow? I mean, it's just such a cool relationship. Suchita had a bunch of stories as well.
Suchita Kumar, MS4: One that I spoke about in today's panel was how my portfolio coach helped me navigate the question of which specialty to go into, which is one of the biggest questions I think we all answer as med students. What she did so effectively was combine her experience with what she knew to be my values, which she'd learned over the first year and second year. Knowing my background, knowing my interests, she put that all together to help me bounce ideas back and forth and try to make that decision. She also asked really great probing questions to help me challenge some of my misconceptions that I was going into that conversation with. For example, on my surgery clerkship, I actually loved it, but I found myself not loving standing for eight hours. Many people find that one of their reasons not to go into the surgical specialty.
But I was thinking, "Would I love the surgical aspect of OB/GYN?" And she asked this question where she was like, "Do you really think that the experience of being in surgery as a medical student is the same as the experience of a resident or an attending in surgery?" The answer to that was no, it actually is really different to be the one operating, being the person who's in charge of the show. That helped me clarify the direction I wanted to go, and she really helped me set goals effectively to try to figure out what to do next in order to help make this decision. I ended up meeting with the specialty mentor, and she did a great job following up on it to make sure that conversation helped me figure things out and see where I was in that journey.
Oftentimes, it's not just one meeting that helps you make a big decision. It's really being a part of the journey—being a part of the story.
Interviewer: I love that. You're busy as a med student dealing with all this other stuff, so isn't it nice to have a little carved-out time with this person that understands you so well, that can emind you of these things? "Let's just take a little quick check-in here and find out what we're really thinking," or, "We talked about this last time, have you considered that more?" You think about it more.
Tom Hurtado, EdD: That is the powerful part about it to me. Here we have this very intense journey to become a physician. What makes medicine so hard is that it's going by so fast. It's like that Ferris Bueller quote: "If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you're gonna miss it." A coach helps you have that moment where you can step out of time a little bit, reflect, and then go back into the busyness again—but with more clarity about who you are.
Interviewer: Suchita, I want to ask you the same question. Five years from now, how do you think being part of the coaching experience is fundamentally going to change how you are as a provider?
Suchita Kumar, MS4: I think self-confidence has been really big. When you come into med school, you come in with a certain degree of confidence, having made it there. The longer you spend in the medical system, it's really easy for you to feel like one of the crowd, and you can lose some perspective on what makes you special. My portfolio coach did a great job of reassuring me. She helped me keep perspective on what makes me special, what's going to make me special as a resident, and what's going to make me special as an attending. Having her reiterate that at various points that would come up in med school that felt challenging was so helpful for me to keep that self-confidence. I think it's going to stay with me even beyond.
Interviewer: How about how you interact with patients? Do you think it'll impact that any way?
Suchita Kumar, MS4: I think so. She modeled a lot of really good questions and really encouraged me to be curious about patients—to go beyond the surface-level background. Seeing the way she asked me questions to get to know me better on a deeper level, that's almost what I want to ask patients and my co-residents to get to know everyone on a deeper level.
Interviewer: Noah, do you want to talk about the patient aspect before we wrap this up?
Noah Danesh, MS3: Absolutely. The really important part of this is that individualization. Dr. Zia saw what my passions were and used those to bring my values in. For example, the value of communicating with patients and really being curious about the problem. She finds what we're good at, and she uses that to channel those values and make that connection for us. In the patient experience, being curious and finding ways to connect the dots really shines through.
Interviewer: We've had a great conversation. Anything else you want to say?
Tom Hurtado, EdD: I just want to say I'm so proud of the students. It was a great session and very unique that an audience could come and peer into what an actual coach-coachee relationship looks like from three amazing schools. It was powerful.
Noah Danesh, MS3: We appreciate you, Tom, for moderating it and helping it run so well.
Suchita Kumar, MS4: I was so impressed with Tom, both you and Kat, how well you asked questions and how you encouraged the conversation. It was excellent to see.
Interviewer: That's so awesome. What would you like to say to an institution that does not have a formalized coaching program to encourage them to do it?
Suchita Kumar, MS4: Do it.
Tom Hurtado, EdD: It's pretty easy.
Noah Danesh, MS3: That's the best way to put it. If you listen throughout this whole podcast, I think you'll see why it's so important.
Tom Hurtado, EdD: You have to try it. You have to go into that space knowing that you will get better at having a coaching program, but don't hold back just because you don't know how to get it started or you don't know what will happen after it starts. Let it roll out organically, and you'll see great things happen.
Interviewer: Thank you so much. What a great conversation.