This session examines how AI-driven digital physiology simulations can transform pathophysiology education by moving beyond passive methods, such as lectures and static case studies. Traditional approaches often fragment complex systems and promote memorization rather than deep understanding, leaving learners with limited opportunities to test ideas or observe the consequences of their reasoning. 

The session will begin with an overview of current challenges in pathophysiology teaching and the rationale for simulation. A live demonstration of an AI digital physiology platform will show how systemic responses can be visualized dynamically. Participants will then take part in a case-based exercise, applying simulation tools to clinical decision-making and receiving immediate feedback on their outcomes. A facilitated group discussion will explore educational value, integration into curricula, and opportunities for scaling across healthcare systems. 

The session will highlight how interactive simulations support active, experiential learning. By modelling processes across cellular, organ, and systemic levels in real-time, these platforms enable learners to explore “what if” scenarios, observe treatment responses, and refine their mental models of disease. Such approaches foster comprehension, engagement, and systems thinking. 

By the end, participants will have a better understanding of current limitations in pathophysiology education, experience how simulation enhances comprehension of dynamic processes, and identify practical steps for adopting AI-based tools to improve engagement and readiness in diverse learner groups.

Learning Outcomes

1. Identify current gaps and limitations in traditional pathophysiology teaching methods. 
2. Explain how an AI-driven digital physiology platform, built from the subcellular to organ level, can model dynamic systemic processes in real time. 
3. Apply simulation-based tools to explore clinical decision-making and receive AI-guided feedback on outcomes. 
4. Critically evaluate how digital simulation enhances learner engagement, comprehension, and systems thinking across diverse learner groups. 
5. Discuss the implications of integrating AI-supported physiology simulations into curricula at local, regional, and national levels. 

In times of rapid change, adaptability in communication and leadership becomes essential for growth in health sciences education. While clinical knowledge and technical skills are explicitly taught, communication and interpersonal abilities, critical for teamwork, professional development, and leadership, are often assumed to emerge “on the job.” To truly prepare medical educators as innovative and resilient leaders, medical education must intentionally integrate leadership development. Evidence supports that such training enhances interdisciplinary collaboration and drives positive transformation in education environments. This workshop introduces an evidence-based, established leadership activity (adapted from business organizational management text) designed to help participants identify their and others leadership and communication styles (called leadership frames). Beginning with a self-quiz, including active exploration of each leadership frame and small group problem-solving of medical education-specific scenarios; completing this focus session will enable participants to adapt to team dynamics, recognize and leverage diverse leadership styles, and apply effective communication strategies in complex settings. Applicable across learner levels and roles, the activity is both replicable at participants’ home institutions and adaptable as a stand-alone or curricular element. Ultimately, the focus equips participants with tools to flourish through personal growth; empowering them to reframe workplace dynamics and empower reinterpretation of leadership styles.

Learning Outcomes

• Name/describe characteristics of the four leadership frames; identify one’s dominant frame.
• Distinguish and recognize effective/ineffective use of each leadership frame.
• Apply leadership frames to academic medicine interactions and describe how teams/communication are impacted.
• Describe the impact of diversity in leadership frames within a team.

The evolution of professional health sciences licensure exams, particularly the shift to competency-based assessments and an increased focus on professional skills, necessitates a curriculum recalibration. This interactive focus session will guide health sciences education faculty through the rationale behind these changes, emphasizing the move toward integrated, skills-based assessment models. We will explore practical strategies for adapting existing curricula to enhance horizontal and vertical integration of foundational sciences with newly emphasized topics in communication, ethics, and patient safety. Participants will engage in small group brainstorming to design curricular activities that meet these new needs, addressing challenges such as declining first-time pass rates. The session will conclude with how to leverage AI tools for efficient content generation, such as creating new case studies and practice questions. Our goal is to empower faculty with the knowledge and tools to effectively align their teaching with modern professional standards and foster a more holistic approach to student learning and assessment.

Learning Outcomes

• Describe the evolving landscape of health sciences licensure exams, including the shift toward competency-based assessment and its impact on pass rates.
• Analyze how their current curriculum aligns with the new integrated, systems-based content model.
• Identify opportunities for enhancing vertical and horizontal integration of foundational sciences with professional competencies.
• Ideate at least one new, actionable curricular activity focused on communication, patient safety, or ethics through small-group brainstorming.
• Formulate effective prompts to utilize AI as a tool for generating new teaching content, such as case studies and practice questions.

Integrating knowledge across foundational, clinical, and health systems sciences is a core competency in undergraduate medical education and essential for preparing learners to deliver safe, effective, and contextually aware care. Traditional curricula often isolate these domains, but real-world practice demands synthesis and application. This workshop addresses the urgent need for practical strategies to assess learners’ ability to integrate medical knowledge in ways that reflect clinical complexity and promote meaningful learning.

LBy the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
Define key components of competency in knowledge integration.
Evaluate tools for assessing integration, including use cases and challenges.
Design a context-specific assessment activity that captures learners’ ability to connect knowledge across domains.

The workshop combines interactive mini-presentations (polling, Padlet, chat), small group discussions, case-based analysis, and hands-on design activities. Participants will critique sample tools and collaboratively develop integration-focused assessments.

Participants will receive:

• Assessment Method Evaluation Rubric
• Assessment Design Template
• Implementation Planning Worksheet
• Sample Integration Rubric with Milestones
• Case-Based Assessment Scenarios

Learning Outcomes

1. Define the components of competency in integrating medical knowledge across foundational, clinical, and health systems sciences.
2. Analyze selected tools that assess the ability to integrate knowledge, including identifying appropriate contexts for use and common implementation challenges.
3. Design an assessment activity, tailored to their own educational contexts and needs, that provides performance data regarding learners’ ability to connect knowledge across domains.

This focus session addresses a critical gap in pre-clerkship medical education: the development of authentic self-assessment capabilities that extend beyond traditional practice questions. Current evidence demonstrates significant limitations in medical student self-assessment, with meta-analyses showing only modest correlations (r = 0.042-0.334) between student self-assessment and actual performance. This session introduces an evidence-based approach using learning objectives as metacognitive scaffolds, combined with AI-supported prompting strategies (TRACI framework: Task-Role-Audience-Create-Intent) to develop reflective practitioners rather than rote memorizers.

Participants will experience hands-on implementation of structured self-assessment processes, learn validated evaluation methods using instruments like the Self-Reflection and Insight Scale (SRIS) and Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI), and develop institutional implementation strategies based on the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). Expected outcomes include practical tools for immediate implementation, evidence-based evaluation frameworks, and strategies for addressing technology integration challenges in medical education contexts.

Learning Outcomes

1. Apply evidence-based rationale for metacognitive scaffolding approaches in medical education, distinguishing between assessment accuracy and self-regulated learning skill development.
2. Design and implement AI-supported self-assessment processes using learning objectives as frameworks, incorporating the TRACI prompting methodology (Task-Role-Audience-Create-Intent) for reflective rather than memorization-based learning.
3. Select and utilize validated measurement instruments (SRIS, MAI, SRLPS) to evaluate metacognitive skill development and self-regulated learning outcomes in pre-clerkship students.
4. Create evaluation strategies that measure both immediate learning outcomes and long-term metacognitive skill transfer.

Rapidly changing and uncertain times call for developing new skills and competence. Faculty of health professions education schools rarely receive leadership training and development during graduate or medical school study. Efforts to offer leadership development have been outpaced by rapidly changing technologies, pedagogies, finances, and policies. Lack of knowledge and resources limit effective planning and decision-making and ultimately contribute to faculty dissatisfaction.

This focus session will introduce contemporary leadership frameworks and resources for use by current and aspiring health professions education leaders. The interactive session will begin with an overview of multiple contemporary leadership frameworks and discussion of strengths, limitations, and possible uses for each. Next, participants will work in small groups to develop their own leadership competence by applying these to case-based scenarios that reflect current, real world challenges facing academic leaders. Following small group work, the entire group will compare approaches and discuss new ideas and solutions that emerged in small groups. In the final part of the session, participants will debunk persistent leadership myths and create a personal leadership development plan to promote professional growth and flourishing. Special emphasis will be placed on the relationships between professional growth and development, self-assessment, and flourishing as a leader – even when you are leading from the middle as a leader without a formal leadership title.

Learning Outcomes

• Describe several popular leadership frameworks
• Discuss the evidence to counter common leadership myths
• Apply a leadership framework to a contemporary leadership scenario in health professions education
• Create a personal leadership development plan to promote professional growth and flourishing

The transition of the USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX-USA Level 1 exams to a pass/fail scoring system has created a need for adaptability in the way medical educators advise students for residency preparation. With this change, residency program directors have shifted to a more holistic review of applicants with a greater emphasis on activities outside of the classroom, especially research. This increased focus on medical student research requires innovative strategies, particularly at schools in which resources are limited. Public datasets could provide the ability to generate quality research opportunities for medical students with a low “barrier to entry”.

In this session, we will cover the details of a curriculum created to generate student research that could be easily translated to any medical school. This session will allow attendees to explore an available database to look for variables that would be needed to answer a given research question. Attendees will be able to list available public databases, describe how to search for variables needed to answer a research question, and implement a plan for how data mining could be used at their institution to help students generate quality research projects.

Shared open education resources (OER) can address health professions education content development challenges driven by near-universal time and resource constraints while providing faculty development opportunities. Recent UNESCO education conferences have highlighted the global opportunity for generative AI to transform the development of OER. This interactive session will provide an overview of OER for health professions educators and provide hands-on strategies and generative AI tools for designing and developing high-quality OER. It will also address potential pitfalls and challenges with quality, critical appraisal, copyright and attribution issues when leveraging AI.

Historically, high-quality health professions education has been expensive to develop at scale and limited to major commercial or academic publishers. New digital platforms have accelerated the development of open education resources (OER) which evolved to address critical cost and accessibility issues in education globally. Notably, UNESCO has developed guidelines and policies supporting OER development at the country and institutional level. Emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tools, in particular, offer unprecedented opportunities to streamline content creation, personalize learning, and automate resource curation, further expanding equitable access to quality educational materials. UNESCO has highlighted these potential applications at the Third UNESCO World OER Congress in 2024 and the 2025 UNESCO Digital Learning Week Conference. Finally, novel shared curricular ecosystem platforms can standardize and facilitate the management of OER, empowering a global community of health professions educators to share, collaborate, and go further together. However, AI applications for curriculum design and development are often misunderstood, and educators have limited experience with quality, critical appraisal, copyright and attribution issues when leveraging AI.

Health professions institutions design their curricula to be integrated either vertically, with clinical relevance over time, and/or horizontally between disciplines within one course. It’s easier for health professions educators to integrate vertically by using relevant clinical examples. In contrast, it can be more challenging for educators to integrate disciplines horizontally to create interdisciplinary sessions that are co-taught by discipline experts. Therefore, despite the known benefits of integration in health professions education, it leads to disciplines being taught discretely in separate lectures. We developed the SHIFT (Session-level Horizontal Integration Fit for Teaching) Conceptual Framework as a practical guide for health professions educators interested in creating interdisciplinary sessions to be co-taught synchronously. It is a framework for foundational health professions educators to integrate their disciplines of expertise collaboratively and horizontally at the level of a single lecture or a small group of lectures on a particular topic. SHIFT is a four-phase framework with objective statements within each phase for educators to follow. We created the framework based on our session, “Acid-Base Disorders,” where we integrated physiology and biochemistry disciplines for two asynchronous lectures and a team-based learning module.  

In this focus session, presenters would spend the first 15 minutes introducing the SHIFT framework to attendees. The remaining 75 minutes would be dedicated to small group interactions based on each phase of the framework with intermittent report-outs. Within their small groups, attendees will explore ideas utilizing the framework and discover potential opportunities for collaborative integration at their home institutions. We expect participants to use SHIFT to streamline the process of integrating important health sciences topics, as well as identify possible benefits and challenges of integration.

AI provides opportunities to improve assessment and feedback for educators and learners, aligning with competency-based medical education (CBME), where the focus is shifting from one-size-fits-all knowledge assessment toward personalized evaluations of measurable clinical performance. High-quality question design across cognitive levels is essential, ensuring students are evaluated not only on recall but also on application, analysis, and reasoning. Meanwhile, AI technologies such as intelligent tutoring systems and conversational bots provide scalable tools to simulate scenarios, deliver adaptive feedback, and promote reflective learning.

This session introduces participants to two complementary skill sets: (1) creating robust assessment items that measure competence across Bloom’s taxonomy, and (2) building AI-powered clinical scenario bots that guide learners through adaptive decision-making pathways. The session combines facilitator demonstrations, question design, small-group bot development, and whole-group discussion of educational value, clinical relevance, and responsible AI use.

AI-driven question generation and feedback foster personalized, self-directed learning, enabling students to arrive better prepared and reflective, for meaningful interactions with educators. Simultaneously, educators gain insights into learners’ cognitive levels and difficulties, enhancing outcomes while reducing workload and allowing greater focus on mentorship.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to integrate AI tools to design meaningful assessments, support personalized learning, and advance CBME while streamlining faculty effort.

Learning Outcomes

• Create valid and pedagogically aligned assessment items suitable for different learning contexts
• Gain increased confidence in using AI-driven platforms in both individual and collaborative settings
• Use AI to develop instructional materials, evaluate student knowledge, and provide personalized feedback
• Modify their pedagogical approach to integrate emerging technologies that enhance clinical reasoning and self-directed learning

Basic science educators play a vital, yet often underrecognized, role in shaping the competencies and professional identity of future physicians. Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) calls for intentional alignment between teaching behaviors and defined outcomes such as professionalism, critical thinking, lifelong learning, and systems-based practice. At the 2024 IAMSE Conference, Dr. Alison Whelan made a call to action during her plenary talk about the role of basic science educators in supporting CBME. This focus session is an extension of this plenary talk to explore how educators’ everyday actions, inside and outside the classroom, serve as powerful role modelling opportunities. Using small-group discussions, reflective exercises, and case-based activities, the agenda includes an introduction to CBME and the key principles of role modelling, small-group case discussions on real-world scenarios, reflective activities to identify personal teaching behaviors, and a large-group debrief to share practical strategies for integrating CBME principles into education practices. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how role modelling supports competency development and a personal action plan for intentional role modelling in their educational settings.

Learning Outcomes

1. Define key principles of CBME and role modelling.
2. Identify core competencies (e.g., professionalism, lifelong learning, systems thinking) that basic science educators can actively model.
3. Reflect on and articulate specific ways they currently serve as role models for medical students.
4. Collaborate with peers to generate ideas for integrating CBME-aligned role modelling into their education practices
5. Create a personal action plan that identifies at least one behavior or approach they will adopt or refine to better serve as a CBME-aligned role model at their institution.

Bioethics is often introduced in medical curricula as a separate subject, focusing on codes, principles, or compliance. While necessary, this approach risks treating ethics as an isolated theme rather than as a thread that weaves meaning and integrity into professional formation. For health professionals to flourish, bioethics must move beyond discrete lectures and be intentionally embedded into curriculum development, teaching practice, assessment systems, and faculty feedback cultures.

This Focus Session will reframe bioethics as a cornerstone of humanizing medical education. Participants will engage with short case vignettes and structured activities that illustrate how ethical awareness influences learner flourishing, professional identity, and resilience. Facilitators will guide discussion on ways to integrate bioethics as a longitudinal curricular strand rather than a stand-alone module. Emphasis will be placed on designing curricula that link ethical reasoning to clinical learning, developing assessment approaches that capture values and professionalism, and preparing faculty to role-model and provide constructive feedback grounded in ethics.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a conceptual framework and a set of practical, curriculum-level strategies to integrate bioethics across the continuum of health professions education. This session directly supports the IAMSE 2026 theme by positioning bioethics as a driver of adaptability, innovation, and growth in both learners and institutions.

Learning Outcomes

1. Describe how bioethics supports flourishing and professional identity formation in medical education.
2. Identify opportunities for embedding bioethics into curriculum development across preclinical, clinical, and workplace learning.
3. Develop strategies to integrate ethical principles into teaching practice and faculty–learner interactions.
4. Explore approaches to align assessment and feedback with values of integrity, respect, and professionalism.
5. Propose methods for incorporating research and scholarship within bioethics education to ensure sustainability and impact.

Medical education today is centered on active learning. Application exercises offer a powerful way to achieve this. Engaging learners in clinical reasoning and diagnostic thinking requires more than didactic instruction—providing hands-on, integrative, game-based activities with clinically relevant strategies make learning both fun and effective. This focus session introduces a collaborative application exercise using a matching game format where clinical presentations are paired with laboratory findings while integrating subject questions exploring pathophysiology. The presenter will first demonstrate a real-world matching game to showcase how the activity works in practice. Following this, they will work in small groups to design their own lab-clinical matching games tailored to their educational context. This session will provide educators with a practical, adaptable tool to promote active learning in pre-clinical or clinical settings. Attendees will leave with a sample activity and ideas for implementation in small or large group environments.

Learning Outcomes

• Describe the value of application exercises and game-based learning in fostering active engagement, clinical reasoning, and integration of foundational science in medical education.
• Analyze a real-world sample lab-clinical matching game to understand its structure, content, and instructional purpose.
• Design a matching game activity that pairs clinical presentations with corresponding laboratory findings and incorporates questions on pathophysiology or related basic science concepts.
• Identify strategies to adapt the format for different learner levels and instructional settings.

Medical education today is centered on active learning. Application exercises offer a powerful way to achieve this. Engaging learners in clinical reasoning and diagnostic thinking requires more than didactic instruction—providing hands-on, integrative, game-based activities with clinically relevant strategies make learning both fun and effective. This focus session introduces a collaborative application exercise using a matching game format where clinical presentations are paired with laboratory findings while integrating subject questions exploring pathophysiology. The presenter will first demonstrate a real-world matching game to showcase how the activity works in practice. Following this, they will work in small groups to design their own lab-clinical matching games tailored to their educational context. This session will provide educators with a practical, adaptable tool to promote active learning in pre-clinical or clinical settings. Attendees will leave with a sample activity and ideas for implementation in small or large group environments.

Learning Outcomes

• Describe the value of application exercises and game-based learning in fostering active engagement, clinical reasoning, and integration of foundational science in medical education.
• Analyze a real-world sample lab-clinical matching game to understand its structure, content, and instructional purpose.
• Design a matching game activity that pairs clinical presentations with corresponding laboratory findings and incorporates questions on pathophysiology or related basic science concepts.
• Identify strategies to adapt the format for different learner levels and instructional settings.

The shift toward integrated, longitudinal medical curricula has created new leadership demands that existing faculty development frameworks inadequately address. Faculty leading these complex curricula require competencies beyond traditional teaching skills, including systems thinking, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and holistic curriculum stewardship. The presenters of this focus session recently developed the Generalist Leadership Assessment for Skills and Strengths (GLASS) Tool which addresses this gap by providing a validated framework with three domains: Humility and Life-long Learning, Supporting Diverse Collaborations, and Holistic Stewardship of Curriculum.

This interactive workshop moves beyond tool introduction to practical application. Participants will use the GLASS Tool to identify leadership development needs and apply Kern's 6-step model to design targeted faculty development sessions. Through structured scenarios encompassing various competencies, institutional contexts, and participant roles, small groups will create actionable professional development activities that can be implemented at their home institutions.

The session begins with GLASS Tool orientation and generalist leadership principles (20 minutes), followed by small group work where teams select specific competencies and use Kern's model to design faculty development interventions (45 minutes). Groups will share their designs in a gallery walk format, fostering cross-institutional learning and collaboration (20 minutes). The session concludes with implementation planning and resource sharing (5 minutes).

Expected outcomes include participants gaining familiarity with the GLASS Tool, developing competency-specific faculty development activities, and creating implementable plans for their institutions. This workshop addresses the critical need for systematic leadership development in modern medical education while providing practical tools for immediate application.

Learning Outcomes

1. Apply the GLASS Tool framework to assess individual and team leadership competencies within integrated and longitudinal medical curricula, identifying specific areas for targeted development.
2. Design evidence-based faculty development sessions using Kern's 6-step model that address specific GLASS competencies relevant to their institutional context and learner needs.
3. Develop targeted learning objectives, educational strategies, and assessment methods for faculty development activities focused on generalist leadership competencies such as cross-disciplinary collaboration, systems thinking, and curriculum integration.
4. Create actionable implementation plans for faculty development programming that can be adapted and deployed at their home institutions to support leadership development in integrated curricula.
5. Collaborate effectively in interdisciplinary teams to share strategies, resources, and best practices for developing generalist leadership competencies across diverse educational settings.
6. Evaluate the alignment between identified leadership needs and proposed development activities, ensuring that faculty development efforts directly address the challenges of leading integrated, longitudinal curricula.

Gender equity in health sciences education continues to face structural barriers. Women faculty advance more slowly through promotion and tenure, experience persistent salary inequities, and remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions. These gaps are reinforced by how academic work is valued. Teaching, mentoring, and service, which are disproportionately carried out by women, are often undervalued in promotion and compensation systems. Additionally, inconsistent policies for parental and caregiving leave create further obstacles, limiting career progression. These inequities persist within a shifting political climate that places added pressures on institutional commitments to equity, underscoring the urgency of addressing them to prevent stalled careers, loss of leadership potential, and attrition, and to ensure that faculty and learners can flourish in their academic careers.

This Focus Session will provide participants with an interactive forum to examine these challenges and develop strategies for sustaining and advancing gender equity in academic medicine and the health sciences. The session will begin with a 15-minute overview of current data and institutional examples, such as salary audits, promotion delays linked to service obligations, and reductions in caregiving support.

Participants will then engage in 40 minutes of small group case discussion. The session will reconvene for a 20-minute large group discussion, followed by a 15-minute synthesis of actionable strategies to promote flourishing and equity across institutions.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to identify structural barriers to gender equity in promotion, compensation, leadership, and caregiving support, analyze case examples to uncover institutional vulnerabilities and protective factors, propose adaptable strategies to advance gender equity in academic medicine and health sciences education, and build networks of peers to sustain ongoing institutional change.

Learning Outcomes

1. Identify and describe the most persistent barriers to gender equity in academic medicine, with attention to promotion and tenure, salary, leadership opportunities, and caregiving support.
2. Analyze case-based examples that illustrate how inequities emerge within institutional structures, and compare approaches that different institutions have taken to address them.
3. Generate and propose strategies that can be adapted across institutional settings to promote gender equity, even in climates where external political or financial pressures challenge equity-related initiatives.
4. Synthesize collective insights into a concise set of actionable strategies that can guide institutions in protecting and advancing equity.
5. Develop professional connections with peers who share an interest in gender equity and institutional change, strengthening the broader network of educators committed to equity in health sciences.

These outcomes emphasize not only recognition of problems but also the development of transferable solutions and the building of collaborative professional networks. Participants will leave with both practical tools and strengthened connections to sustain gender equity efforts within their own institutions.

Medical education is  increasingly prioritizing  the development of adaptive expertise—the ability to apply knowledge to common and routine problems, as well as transfer understanding to solve novel problems. Traditional approaches to teaching, however, often emphasize efficiency and correctness, giving learners the “right answer” too quickly. While this may increase short-term satisfaction, it can limit the deeper cognitive engagement needed for transfer and innovation.

Productive Failure (PF) is a pedagogical framework that offers a powerful instructional design strategy to address this gap. PF deliberately structures learning so that students struggle with complex problems before receiving explicit direct instruction. This initial, often unsuccessful attempt is thought to activate prior knowledge, reveals misconceptions, and sensitizes learners to critical features of the problem space. When productive failure is followed by guidance or direct instruction in a timely fashion, learners are cognitively primed to connect and integrate new information more deeply and retain it for transfer during future problem solving. PF is currently not commonly practiced, but evidence from the literature suggests it should be a core element for fostering adaptive expertise.

Learning Outcomes

• Participants will be able to explain the Science of Learning as viewed through the lens of Productive Failure and its four core mechanisms: Activation (prior knowledge engagement), Awareness (recognition of learning gaps), Affect (emotional engagement), and Assembly (integration of new knowledge).
• Participants will be able to design activities that incorporate the structured framework of PF to enhance retention, comprehension, and knowledge transfer.

This focus session addresses some common limitations of traditional mentoring and introduces coaching techniques that foster empathetic listening, curiosity, deeper engagement, and mentee autonomy. Participants will explore how coaching techniques can transform mentoring relationships by empowering mentees to discover their own solutions and growth plans.

The session begins with an overview of some common mentoring pitfalls and the distinctions between coaching and other supportive roles. It introduces key International Coaching Federation competencies, emphasizing “Evoking Awareness” and “Facilitating Client Growth", through interactive, paired activities. Participants will practice powerful questioning strategies such as “What else?” and “What with an S?” to build a curiosity mindset and support mentee-led exploration.

This session is timely and relevant for educators navigating the complexities of modern healthcare education, aiming to build more collaborative, empowering relationships with their mentees.

Learning Outcomes

1. Identify Traditional Mentoring Pitfalls. Participants will be able to list and describe at least two pitfalls that arise in traditional mentoring approaches, such as “know-it-all-ism” and the “advice monster,” and explain how these pitfalls can hinder mentee development.
2. Differentiate Between Coaching and Mentoring. Participants will accurately distinguish between coaching and other approaches like mentoring, advising, counseling, and sponsoring by outlining at least two key differences.
3. Apply Coaching Competencies. Participants will demonstrate the application of International Coaching Federation Competencies, specifically Evoking Awareness and Facilitating Client Growth, by participating in guided paired practice activities during the session.
4. Utilize Effective Questioning Techniques. Participants will practice open-ended, curiosity-driven questioning strategies, such as “What else?” and “What with an S” questions, in their mentoring scenarios, reflected through interactive exercises during the session.
5. Develop a Personal Action Plan. Participants will create a personal action plan by the end of the session, identifying at least two initial steps they will take to implement a coaching approach in their mentoring practices within the next three months.

This Focus Session introduces participants to next-generation Generative AI for teaching clinical and communication skills in healthcare education. Building on the freely available AI Patient Actor, we demonstrate enhanced capabilities including voice-native interactions, personality modeling, and prosody analysis. The AI Patient Actor provides scalable opportunities for diagnostic reasoning practice, allowing students to conduct comprehensive histories, gather clinical information, and develop differential diagnoses through realistic patient interactions. Medical educators will learn to create distinct patient personalities with unique emotional profiles and communication styles for both diagnostic and communication training. For diagnostic skills, the AI presents symptoms, responds to clinical questions, and provides examination findings that challenge students' diagnostic understanding and clinical reasoning. For communication training, voice-native capabilities enable emotionally nuanced interactions where prosody analysis provides feedback on students' tone, pace, and emotional resonance, teaching not just what to say but how to say it. Participants will engage hands-on with the platform, creating patient personalities ranging from anxious teenagers to stoic elderly patients, each requiring different communication approaches. We'll explore how the AI supports iterative diagnostic practice while separately developing empathetic communication through voice analysis. By session's end, participants will understand how to leverage these distinct but complementary features: AI patients for unlimited diagnostic reasoning practice and voice/prosody analysis for mastering the subtle art of clinical communication.

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand AI Patient Actors for diagnostic reasoning training: Participants will learn how the AI Patient Actor enables students to practice history-taking, clinical reasoning, and differential diagnosis development through unlimited interactions with virtual patients presenting diverse clinical scenarios.
2. Master voice-native AI for communication skills: Participants will gain hands-on experience with voice-to-voice AI interactions that convey emotional nuance, understanding how prosody analysis helps students develop empathetic communication by providing feedback on tone, pace, and emotional presence.
3. Create diverse patient personalities: Participants will design multidimensional patient characters with distinct traits, emotional profiles, and cultural backgrounds, useful for both diagnostic reasoning exercises and communication skills training across various clinical contexts.
4. Apply prosody analysis for communication excellence: Participants will use AI-powered voice analysis tools that evaluate delivery, providing students with actionable feedback on their non-verbal communication skills and bedside manner.
5. Integrate AI tools across clinical curricula: Participants will develop strategies for implementing the open-access AI Patient Actor for diagnostic reasoning practice in basic science and clinical courses, ensuring these technologies complement existing educational approaches.

This interactive session will explore the guiding role human flourishing can play in informing the multifaceted roles of a health sciences educator to promote professional meaning, purpose, and fulfillment as an academician. Emphasis will be placed on three domains viewed as essential to the success of health sciences educators: personal development, curriculum development, and professional development. Following a brief overview of the concepts framing human flourishing and its role in education, reflective activities will guide participants to understand how the domains impact their formation as educators. The session will conclude by exploring the landscape of flourishing interventions and strategies aimed at enhancing educator roles and expanding influence to promote the flourishing of institutions and learners. 

Learning Outcomes

1. Apply a functional definition of flourishing to the context of educator formation and its role in academic flourishing.
2. Assess one’s current state of flourishing across the key educator domains of personal development, curriculum development, and professional development.
3. Identify practical strategies and goals to promote flourishing across the key educator domains of personal development, curriculum development, and professional development.

Health professions educators often face setbacks—classroom sessions that fall flat, feedback that stings, change that overwhelms, or innovations that don’t land as expected. Yet within these moments lie powerful opportunities for reflection, emotional growth, and meaningful transformation. This focus session reframes failure not as something to fear or fix, but as a springboard for learning, connection, and professional flourishing.

Grounded in principles of Appreciative Inquiry, emotional regulation, and growth mindset, the session offers a structured and psychologically safe environment where participants can share, process, and reframe their own educational challenges. Rather than problem-solving from a deficit perspective, we will explore how setbacks—when embraced with curiosity and vulnerability—can unlock new approaches to teaching, mentoring, and leadership.

Learning Outcomes

1. Reflect critically on personal or institutional educational setbacks.
2. Apply reframing strategies to extract learning from challenges.
3. Practice giving and receiving constructive dialogue around failure.
4. Identify systems-level strategies to normalize and support growth through failure.
5. Develop a personal “Growth Through Setback” plan to apply in their own context.

As allied health professional students increasingly seek individualized pathways to align with their interests and distinguish themselves for residency, fellowship, and employment, programs such as scholarly concentrations, tracks, pathways, and certificates must demonstrate clear evidence of learner success and achievement. However, assessment strategies for these non-required programs are often underdeveloped or addressed late in the process.

This interactive focus session will support educators, program developers, and academic leaders in identifying and implementing meaningful assessment strategies for optional curricular initiatives. Through brief didactics that overview the basics of program assessment and evaluation, as well as concrete examples and guided small-group work, participants will use a structured worksheet to map assessment methods to their program’s goals and intended outcomes. Following small-group discussions, a report-out and facilitated debrief will allow for peer feedback and cross-institutional idea sharing.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a draft assessment map tailored to their program’s structure and goals, and with practical tools to strengthen evaluation processes in non-core curricula.

Learning Outcomes

1. Describe how clearly articulated program goals inform and guide appropriate methods of assessment.
2. Identify and match meaningful assessment strategies to the structure and scope of their non-required programs.
3. Apply the Kirkpatrick Model of Evaluation to aim beyond Level 1 (“reaction”) and consider higher-level outcomes such as behavior change and results.
4. Develop an initial assessment plan that aligns program objectives with measurable outcomes and can evolve over time.

According to AAMC data, the majority of US medical schools have a "shortened" preclerkship phase of the curriculum (eg. less than two years in length). Additionally, the change of USMLE Step 1 to pass/fail in an educational landscape for which the majority of US medical schools have a two tiered grading system has arguably further impacted cumulative learning. This session is designed to help participants reflect on their personal teaching experiences while also learning about strategies to facilitate cumulative learning and assessment employed at other medical schools. This interactive session will incorporate small group discussion and large group debrief to foster innovation exchange.

In addition to COVID, there are significant recent external factors that have impacted the learning environment and fundamentally altered the landscape of undergraduate medical education. The transition of USMLE Step 1 exam to pass/fail and the existing pass/fail grading schema at most medical schools in the preclerkship phase has removed external motivators (albeit imperfect motivators) for cumulative and integrative learning across the pre-clerkship curriculum. Many medical schools are facing the challenge of promoting longitudinal learning habits among students who may focus more narrowly on immediate course assessments. This shift provides an opportunity to be even more intentional in connecting concepts across organ systems, building upon previous knowledge, and integrating foundational sciences with the physician task in mind. This session is designed to help participants identify and compare innovative strategies for advancing cumulative learning shared by peers from diverse medical schools and reflect on how these approaches might best be adapted to their own institutional context. Sharing solutions across institutions is essential, as no single school has fully solved the challenge. An “Innovation Exchange” workshop creates a platform for educators to listen, learn, and discuss strategies that advance cumulative learning in a post–Step 1 pass/fail world.

Learning Outcomes

• Define Gagne’s nine events of instruction (in the context of cumulative learning) 
• Identify shared challenges/opportunities related to fostering cumulative learning in medical education 
• Compare innovative strategies shared by peers from diverse institutions to strengthen longitudinal, cumulative learning. 
• Formulate an action item or next step to pilot or adapt an innovation for advancing cumulative learning at their home institution. 

This interactive focus session introduces restorative justice (RJ) as a framework for addressing harm, building trust, and strengthening resilience within academic medicine communities. Traditional approaches to conflict and bias in medical education often rely on compliance or discipline, leaving relationships strained and institutional cultures unchanged. RJ offers an alternative grounded in dialogue, accountability, and community repair—principles that align with the core values of medicine, including healing and care.

The 90-minute session begins with a brief overview of RJ principles and their relevance to academic medicine, followed by small-group case discussions exploring conflicts such as student–faculty tensions, microaggressions in clinical teaching, and departmental policy disputes. Using restorative questions—Who was harmed? What is needed? Who is responsible?—participants will analyze each case and consider restorative responses. Large-group integration will highlight shared insights, and a short skills practice will introduce RJ dialogue techniques.

By session’s end, participants will leave with a deeper understanding of RJ, practical strategies for implementation, and concrete steps for fostering resilient, trust-based academic communities.

Learning Outcomes

1. They will be able to define restorative justice (RJ) in the context of medical education and articulate how it differs from punitive or compliance-driven approaches. Participants will leave with language to describe RJ as a framework rooted in healing, accountability, and resilience that aligns with the professional values of the medical field.
2. Participants will learn to apply RJ principles to real-world academic medicine scenarios. Through case-based discussions on issues such as student–faculty conflict, microaggressions in clinical teaching, and departmental rifts, they will practice identifying who was harmed, what needs must be addressed, and what restorative actions are possible. These exercises will build capacity to analyze harm and propose constructive, community-centered responses.
3. Participants will have the opportunity to practice restorative dialogue techniques, including circle prompts and restorative questioning. This experiential activity will provide hands-on familiarity with tools that can be adapted for use in classrooms, clerkships, faculty meetings, and mentoring conversations.
4. Participants will identify concrete steps to bring RJ into their own institutional contexts. Through closing reflections, they will commit to at least one pathway for implementation, whether in policy development, student support, or faculty development.

Supporting struggling learners is a recurring challenge in medical education, and it can be especially complex in transnational programs where students face dual curricula, language demands, and cultural expectations. These difficulties place students at risk of poor performance or attrition, which not only undermines individual academic success but also threatens the sustainability of host-institution partnerships. This focused session introduces self-regulated learning (SRL) as a theory-informed framework for understanding and addressing these challenges. Drawing on Zimmerman’s cyclical model and Pintrich’s four-phase model, the session highlights how SRL can be applied to diagnose learning difficulties, guide remediation strategies, and equip students to manage work demands.

Participants will engage with de-identified case vignettes drawn from the presenter's experience that illustrate common struggles in international/transnational programs. Using small-group discussion and analysis, the participants will engage with the cases by: identifying SRL deficits, considering how these map onto different stages of the learning process described by SRL theories, and proposing tailored strategies. Attention will also be given to when coaching or near-peer mentoring may provide effective support, offering participants practical approaches that are transferable across diverse contexts.

By the end of the session, participants will have applied SRL theories to authentic cases, reflected on their own teaching or mentoring practice, and identified strategies they can use to support struggling learners in their own educational settings.

Learning Outcomes

• Apply Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) theories (Zimmerman, Pintrich) to analyse students’ learning behaviours and challenges.
• Identify SRL deficits in case vignettes and propose tailored support strategies by targeting specific SRL stages.
• Evaluate when coaching or near-peer mentoring approaches are most appropriate for struggling learners.
• Reflect on their own teaching or mentoring practice and identify ways to incorporate SRL-informed strategies.

Gamified learning has emerged as a powerful educational tool to enhance student motivation and knowledge acquisition in health professions education. However, its development and implementation can be hindered by faculty time, resources, and instructional design expertise. This session will explore how generative artificial intelligence (AI), specifically tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and DALL·E, can serve as catalysts that lower the “activation energy” required to design and execute gamified learning strategies in health professions education regardless of prior game design experience.

This session will include an immersive gameplay among participants to foster collaboration and creation, with the goal of participants leaving the session with new skills and developed products. We will begin with a brief overview of gamified learning/terminology, its educational benefits, and examples ranging in complexity. Facilitators will then demonstrate how AI can “lower the activation energy” by brainstorming game ideas, generating educational content, designing visuals, and organizing logistics. Using case examples and a library of example AI-prompts provided by facilitators, participants will work in small groups to practice designing and implementing gamified learning that aligns with their own institutional constraints and curricular goals. Concluding large-group discussions will present created products, discuss challenges with design, and review the importance of faculty oversight in ensuring pedagogical value and content accuracy.  

By the end of the session, attendees will be empowered to leverage AI tools during the design and implementation of gamified learning strategies. Participants will be able to share their gamified learning products, leave with a ready-to-implement product, and be equipped for future game development.  

Learning Outcomes

1. Articulate the pedagogical benefits of gamified learning in health professions education. 
2. Identify common forms of gamified learning and select those that would best align with their institutional structure and goals. 
3. Identify common barriers and potential solutions to implementing gamified strategies in health professions education. 
4. Describe how generative AI tools can support the development and integration of gamified learning experiences in health professions education 
5. Create their own gamified learning elements using generative AI I prompts

Experiential learning modalities, such as simulation, depend on learners engaging authentically with learning environments that are, by design, artificial. The concept of suspension of disbelief, a term appropriated from theater and narrative studies, plays a crucial but underexamined role in determining how deeply learners engage with the environment, how they process feedback, and ultimately how effectively they learn. While technical fidelity and realism often dominate discussions of simulation design, emerging research suggests that learners’ psychological and emotional investment in an experiential learning environment may be even more important than visual or procedural accuracy. 

This session explores the cognitive and affective dimensions of suspension of disbelief in medical education. Participants will examine how belief suspension operates at the individual, social, and environmental level, and how factors such as scenario design, facilitator framing, and peer dynamics influence it. Through interactive demonstrations and case-based discussion, participants will analyze common moments when disbelief “breaks,” reflect on how this impacts learning outcomes, and identify strategies to foster productive engagement without over-reliance on hyperrealism. 

By the end of the session, participants will better understand how to intentionally design and facilitate experiential learning environments for simulation and beyond, balancing authenticity and believability to optimize learner investment while maintaining psychological safety. 

Learning Outcomes

1. Define suspension of disbelief and describe its relevance to experiential learning for medical education. 
2. Identify factors that support or disrupt suspension of disbelief during learning. 
3. Analyze how disbelief influences learner engagement, reflection, and skill acquisition. 
4. Apply practical strategies to enhance learner immersion and optimize educational outcomes. 

AI is rapidly reshaping medical education, from the way faculty teach and conduct research to how institutions prepare the workforce of the future. Yet many schools struggle to move beyond AI pilot projects toward a coherent strategy. This focus session offers participants a practical pathway: A Toolkit for Integrating AI into Medical Education. Anchored in the International Advisory Committee for Artificial Intelligence (IACAI) Integration Framework, the workshop provides structure for navigating 12 domains of AI integration, spanning AI culture, foundational skills, ethical and responsible use, and tools. It also addresses AI’s role in instruction and academic tasks, enhancement of clinical skills, assessment practices, and curriculum optimization.

The 90-minute agenda is designed for engagement and practical take-home value. Participants will be guided through a gallery of toolkit resources, including Integration Inventories, a Priorities Worksheet, the Framework GPT, AI Literacy Competencies, and a sample AI Foundations course outline. Participants will then complete an institutional inventory to identify their own adoption profile and select three integration priorities. Using AI tools, they will explore strategies for advancing these priorities. Small-group discussions will invite cross-institutional exchange on how different toolkit components support implementation across undergraduate and graduate medical education. A large-group debrief will surface common themes and actionable approaches.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a personalized institutional adoption profile, concrete strategies to advance integration in multiple domains, and access to a curated set of resources for continued planning. This hands-on, collaborative format ensures that medical educators, curriculum leaders, and administrators walk away equipped to lead purposeful AI integration at their institutions.

Learning Outcomes

• Locate and navigate the AI Integration Toolkit and resources.
• Apply the IACAI Integration Framework to select among 12 domains of implementation.
• Use AI chatbots and the Framework GPT to identify integration strategies and solutions.
• Evaluate how toolkit components (Framework GPT, GME Toolkit, AI Literacy Competencies, and curricular exemplars) can support AI integration across different levels of medical education.

Health professions trainees are asked to adapt quickly to high-stakes clinical environments while developing both technical skill and professional identity. Learners may struggle with competence gaps, inefficient approaches, or a lack of confidence, limiting their ability to flourish through challenges, difficulties, complications, and high-stakes situations. This session introduces the Competence–Efficiency–Confidence (CEC) framework, originally developed in veterinary surgical training, as a practical tool for supporting learner adaptability and growth.

In this interactive 90-minute focus session, participants will engage with the framework through short case scenarios, large- and small-group discussions, and application activities. Attendees will first analyze learner cases to determine which element of the framework is most relevant and propose interventions. Facilitators will guide the discussion to highlight reflection as the bridge between competence, efficiency, and confidence. Participants will then identify challenges in their own curricula or clinical settings and use the framework to generate practical strategies for learner growth.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to describe the CEC framework, recognize how its elements interact to influence adaptability, utilize reflection strategies to support learner growth, and generate actionable approaches to integrate the framework into their own teaching and assessment practices.

Learning Outcomes

1. Describe the CEC framework and its application to learner development.
2. Recognize how competence, efficiency, and confidence interact to influence adaptability in clinical education.
3. Utilize reflection strategies to support learner confidence and growth.
4. Generate actionable approaches to integrate the framework into their own curricula or clinical teaching.

Starting medical school is a major transition for students. They must adapt to a new environment and begin to think, act, and feel like a physician, a transformative process known as Professional Identity Formation (PIF). Getting students to meaningfully think about PIF in the early years of medical school is challenging as the curricular demands are high. In this focus session, we will discuss the concept of PIF and tools such as the Professional Identity Essay (PIE) and how PIF can be developed prior to starting medical school in postbaccalaureate premedical (PBPM) programs. Participants will engage with presenters who are actively doing PIF research and have a chance to hear from students about to start medical school who completed PBPM program. They will share their experiences taking the PIE and receiving feedback on their reflections. The session will be interactive and provide opportunities to engage in discussions with the presenters and other audience members.

Professional identity formation (PIF) in healthcare is defined most simply as “...the process through which a student transforms into a physician (or healthcare provider)”. Constructive developmental theory of adult professional identity formation provides a framework to understand PIF over time and suggests that identity development is a longitudinal process which begins before entering professional school and continues throughout professional life. Indeed, previous studies suggest that entering medical students have already begun to form professional identities, and that humanities curricula and reflective writing may enhance identity formation in premedical students. This process, which we refer to as pre-PIF, is important to define in postbaccalaureate premedical (PBPM) students, as a growing number of entering medical students have completed PBPM programs. However, the foundational characteristics and variables contributing to pre-PIF remain unknown.

PBPM students are a growing percentage of our healthcare workforce. PBPM programs can enhance readiness for medical school for premedical students and incoming medical students, respectively. The number of PBPM students entering medical school has increased dramatically in the last 15 years, and over 30 U.S. medical schools report utilizing the PM program to support incoming medical students. Lessons learned from PBPMs can be readily applied to support entering medical students transition into medical school. Therefore, we have begun to investigate pre-PIF in PBPM programs and identify themes that promote pre-PIF. 

In this session, using perspectives from students about to enter medical school who have successfully completed PBPM programs and our research findings, we will address how pre-PIF can help us better guide premedical learners to stronger career fits, support medical school admissions in applicant evaluation, and foster and accelerate PIF in medical students to develop flourishing physicians. 

Learning Outcomes

1. Explain the process of professional identity formation (PIF)
2. Describe the professional identity essay (PIE) and how different medical schools use the PIE to measure PIF
3. Summarize themes that promote PIF before medical school in postbaccalaureate premedical programs
4. Discuss the benefits of the PIE for students application to medical school
5. Describe curricular and co-curricular approaches that reinforce PIF
6. Incorporate PIF into their curriculum

The pursuit of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is central to innovation, excellence, and equity in health sciences education and research. Yet, DEI initiatives are increasingly influenced by political and social contexts. In the United States, the status of DEI has been notably challenged during the current federal administration, where programs advancing inclusive practices came under significant scrutiny and in some cases were scaled back. While these shifts sparked heated national debate, they also provide insights into how health sciences communities can safeguard and adapt DEI initiatives in the face of opposition.

This focus session will use the US experience as a case study to help health sciences educators, researchers, and students worldwide critically reflect on how political transitions shape institutional commitments to inclusion.

Learning Outcomes

1. A critical understanding of how shifts in political leadership and cultural discourse affect DEI policies and practices.
2. Practical strategies and tools to advocate for and implement DEI initiatives even in environments of resistance.
3. A broadened perspective informed by global insights and shared experiences.
4. A collaborative network of colleagues dedicated to advancing equity and inclusion in health sciences.
5. This outcomes-driven design ensures that the session not only informs but also equips participants with actionable strategies that can be directly applied and transferred across diverse institutional and cultural settings.

Effective communication is essential for safe, patient-centered care, yet traditional training—lectures, peer role-play, and standardized patient (SP) encounters—faces limits in frequency, cost, and scalability. Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language model (LLM)-based tools like ChatGPT, is emerging as an innovative way to address these challenges by providing accessible, repeatable, low-stakes opportunities to practice complex interactions. 

Our pilot study showed that ChatGPT can improve medical students’ confidence in delivering difficult news while highlighting limits such as reduced emotional realism. Building on this work, our follow-up study compares generative AI and SPs, exploring how AI can serve as scaffolding to prepare students for higher-stakes human interactions. Large-scale feedback identifies advantages (accessibility, immediate practice, reduced anxiety) and challenges (limited nuance, variable accuracy). 

This focus session uses these studies as a foundation and situates them within broader evidence on AI in medical education. Participants will actively engage with LLMs and explore other AI tools, including multimodal synthetic patients and virtual scenarios, to experience both possibilities and constraints. They will then collaborate in small groups to design prototype modules that integrate AI with traditional communication training, addressing pedagogy, assessment, and ethical safeguards. 

By the session’s end, participants will gain: (1) experience in AI-mediated communication exercises, (2) an understanding of evidence-based benefits and limitations, and (3) concrete, transferable strategies to implement AI-enhanced modules in their own curricula. This session emphasizes hands-on learning, active discussion, and innovation, equipping attendees with tools to thoughtfully integrate AI into medical education while improving student learning and outcomes. 

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand AI’s Role in Communication Training in Medical Education 
   • Describe current and emerging applications of AI in communication skills training in medical education. 
   • Recognize how AI complements traditional methods such as SPs and peer role-play. 
2. Evaluate AI’s Impact on Communication Training in Medical Education 
   • Critically assess strengths and limitations of AI-based communication training based on published and emerging research. 
   • Interpret student feedback on Generative AI vs. SPs, including perceptions of realism, accessibility, and effectiveness. 
3. Develop Actionable Plans
   • Design a prototype AI-enhanced educational module (e.g., breaking bad news, motivational interviewing, cultural competence).
   • Incorporate scaffolding strategies (e.g., Generative AI practice prior to SP encounters), assessment approaches, and ethical guardrails. 
4. Transfer Knowledge to Practice 
   • Identify actionable steps to pilot AI-supported communication training in their own institutions. 
   • Anticipate challenges (e.g., cost, realism, faculty buy-in) and propose strategies to address them. 

“Integrated curriculum” is a widely used yet inconsistently applied concept in medical education. At its core, integration refers to purposeful connections across disciplines—linking basic sciences, clinical sciences, and professional skills to create a cohesive learning experience. Horizontal integration aligns subjects taught within the same phase (e.g., pharmacology with physiology), while vertical integration bridges content across years (e.g., basic sciences with clerkships). Accreditation bodies such as the LCME and WFME emphasize curricular integration for its potential to improve knowledge retention, strengthen clinical reasoning, and better prepare students for practice. However, integration efforts are hindered by siloed teaching structures, misaligned assessments, and faculty resistance.

This interactive workshop will engage health professions educators in addressing barriers to integration, with special emphasis on pharmacology as a model discipline. Through facilitated small-group discussions, participants will analyze real-world case scenarios illustrating integration challenges, brainstorm practical solutions, and share best practices. Large-group debriefing will consolidate strategies for aligning content, fostering faculty buy-in, and redesigning assessments to emphasize interdisciplinary application rather than rote memorization.

Learning Outcomes

1. Explore strategies to engage reluctant faculty and disciplines in curricular integration efforts
2. Discuss approaches for designing assessments that align with integrated curricula
3. Identify practical ways to integrate pharmacology with other basic sciences (e.g., anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, and pathology)
4. Apply insights from group discussions to outline a plan for overcoming common integration barriers at participants’ own institutions.

This 90-minute interactive workshop introduces Self-Directed Mentorship (SDM), an innovative framework that shifts mentorship from a hierarchical, mentor-led model to a mentee-centered, autonomous process. Grounded in Self-Directed Learning (SDL), Self-Determination Theory (SDT), and constructivist pedagogy, SDM equips mentees to diagnose needs, set goals, curate resources, and evaluate progress over time.

The session blends a concise theoretical overview (20 minutes) with highly interactive, small-group activities including SWOT self-assessments, SMART goal co-creation, and mentorship portfolio design. Activities emphasize agency, adaptability, and equity, ensuring mentorship is accessible across diverse backgrounds and institutional contexts.

Participants will collaborate in cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional groups to explore how SDM can be implemented in academic, corporate, and nonprofit environments. Each attendee will leave with tangible deliverables—a personalized SDM action plan, a draft mentorship portfolio, and strategies for scaling the framework in their own settings.

To promote sustained impact, participants will receive a digital resource kit with templates, case studies, and follow-up prompts for continued application post-conference.

Learning Outcomes

• Explain and differentiate the theoretical foundations of SDM (SDL, SDT, constructivism) and distinguish it from traditional mentorship models.
• Diagnose and assess professional development needs using SWOT analysis, competency mapping, and reflective journaling.
• Design and plan SMART goals and a tailored mentorship portfolio integrating diverse, cross-sector resources.
• Analyze and adapt SDM case studies from multiple sectors to identify transferable best practices.
• Commit and transfer one actionable SDM step into their own professional context.
• Sustain and share tools and strategies using a post-session digital resource kit to extend impact across institutions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept but a current reality in higher education and healthcare. From adaptive learning platforms to clinical decision support systems, AI is reshaping how educators teach, assess, and support learners. For health professions education, where accuracy, ethics, and interprofessional collaboration are paramount, the integration of AI offers both opportunities and challenges. Because of its rapid growth, many institutions have already begun publishing their own AI guidelines that are varied between institutions. This 90-minute interactive focus session will provide an opportunity for diverse health profession educators to engage in collaborative dialogue about the responsible integration of AI into education.

Using TBL format, participants will prepare in advance by reviewing their own and institution guideline of AI usage along with a short preparatory material will be provided a week prior to the session. During the session, they will complete individual and team readiness assurance tests (iRAT & tRAT) to consolidate their understanding and set the stage for deeper engagement.

The application phase of the session will include two collaborative tasks. Teams will first identify themes in educators’ current or potential use of AI, noting opportunities and reservations, then engage in inter-team dialogue to compare perspectives. Next, teams will draft and prioritize elements for a “Guideline on the Use of AI in Teaching,” negotiating similarities and differences to create a shared interprofessional framework.

By the end of the session, participants will have critically reflected on their own practice, learned from colleagues across disciplines, and co-created a guideline that can serve as a practical, foundation to inform or supplement institutional policies.

Learning Outcomes

1. Analyze in teams the rationale for using or not using AI in health professions education, drawing on personal and interprofessional perspectives.
2. Identify in teams the common themes, benefits, challenges surrounding AI integration in education.
3. Collaboratively develop a structured set of guiding principles for the responsible use of AI in educational practice.
4. Prioritize in teams the key elements of an AI guideline according to importance and relevance within health professions education.

This focus session is intended for any faculty member who has painstakingly planned and implemented an education intervention and then watched as it failed to achieve desired outcomes. For those who innovate, failure of education interventions is a reality, and we can learn from both what went wrong and what happened next. Yet many of these stories are untold in our traditional forms of dissemination. This focus session provides a space for us to share these challenges and learn from the ways our institutions adapted.

At KU School of Medicine, we knew from student and faculty feedback that our student teams were not fully achieving a desired learning outcome – engaging group feedback to improve team performance in small group learning. The course director collaborated with the educational team to develop a carefully planned, theory-based intervention to address the problem. The intervention, however, ultimately failed because multiple faculty members would not implement the change.

In this session, we will share our experience as a case of a failed intervention. Participants will identify and share practical implementation challenges that cause education interventions to fail, and how they’ve responded when interventions produce unremarkable results. Knowing the roadblocks others have faced could help education researchers more successfully plan future interventions.  

Learning Outcomes

• Paraphrase education innovation challenges reported in health professions literature
• Discuss implementation strategies drawn from implementation research literature
• Recall stories of implementation challenges shared by participants
• Identify options for next steps when education innovations fail or produce unremarkable results
• List strategies for self-care and mindset management when experiencing disappointment or embarrassment related to failure
• Predict potential points of failure for future education interventions