Compassion During Unprecedented Times - Dr. Zsa-Zsa Booker, Learning Skills Specialist at Wayne State University

This episode is part of a series of interviews celebrating the winners of the Osmosis 2020 Raise the Line Faculty Awards for Outstanding Work in Medical Education.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

Joining us today is one of Osmosis Raise the Line Faculty Awards Winners, recipient Dr. Zsa-Zsa Booker from Wayne State University School of Medicine. Dr. Booker, thank you for being here. Please, introduce yourself.

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Hi, my name is Zsa-Zsa Booker. I am a Learning Skills Specialist at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Our offices are in Detroit, Michigan, and, in my role, I help to support students mostly in Segment 2 or Medical School Year 2. I help students with their coursework as far as their learning skills and strategies for preparing for exams, digesting the material, et cetera. I also am the Course Director for the Step 1 Prep Course where I help students navigate through their dedicated studies. I do a lot of teaching in their pre-dedicated portion at Year 2 as well. That's are some of my roles.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

Nice, and how long have you been doing that?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

I've been in the School of Medicine since 2017. Before that, I worked at Wayne State, but I worked on the main campus. I didn't work at the Medical School prior to, but I did similar work with undergraduate students, helping them navigate through their undergraduate careers, so I got my PhD in 2016 and then I joined the Medical School shortly after that.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get started? How did you find your way to now?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Sure. I didn't always plan to be an educator. I always knew that I would be working in a profession where I provided a service but I never thought it would be in education. I was lucky enough to come out of high school and have earned the Bill & Melinda Gates Scholarship, so a Gates Millennium Scholar, earned that scholarship and that afforded me a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and a PhD. My education was paid for out of the gate, so I knew that I was gonna do something. I just had to figure it out. I had a lot of different work opportunities cross my path. Like I said, I was working on main campus while I was finishing up my master's degree and I was doing this type of work with undergraduate students, helping them prepare for exams, helping them with stress management, helping with just all of that stuff, helping students read better, et cetera.

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

After that, I transitioned into the Medical School. I applied for a position at the Medical School. It was a rough transition. I knew nothing about medical education when I came over. All of my degrees are-- I have a science degree. My undergraduate degree is science, but master's was in Information Science. My PhD is in Educational Statistics so I really didn't have a background in medical education, but I caught on really fast when I got on the team. Office of Learning and Teaching is my team that I worked with. When I came on, I was immediately thrown on a really tough project. That's what they told me before. They told me what it was. They said, "You know, this is all hands on deck for this project, but you are our main person for this project," and I said, "Okay, what is it?" And he said, "It's Step 1," and I've been working on that project since that time. It's been challenging. If you know anything about Step 1, you know that it's probably one of the toughest standardized exams medical students take. It's really hard. It's stressful. I always tell my students it can feel really lonely too, because you're working by yourself as you're preparing for that test, and so with all of that being said, I help students navigate through that process for that whole year. I work with students and preparing further stuff, and then again, I teach a course that's designed to help them during their dedicated study period. That's kind of where I am now. It was a interesting path.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

You've obviously inspired many young health professionals to get nominated for this award. Can you speak on who inspired you or what got you inspired to get into education?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Sure. I'd mentioned how I ended up earning my degrees. It was based on the generosity of some philanthropists, so when I really started to digest the fact that I was being awarded such a gift, a gift of education, I really started to rethink about my life goals, so as I was thinking about those changes in my life, I guess the world and everything in it kind of just pulled me to work in higher ed. I did try out working in K-12 for a bit, and I did some work with some kindergarteners and I said, "Wow! They're amazing, but I don't think this is it. I did that for a while, but like I said, the world kind of just pulled me back to working in higher ed, and again, the reason I decided for education is because I just knew that it was important to give back. That's really important to me because if it wasn't for the generosity of others, I wouldn't be where I am so that's why I decided education.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

This is an excerpt of what one of your nominations read about you. "Dr. ZSA-SZA always brings a positive light, spreading it to everyone around her. Her passion is in quantitative research, data analysis, program evaluation, and being the best help to students and the community. She is very thoughtful, very competent and has a very insatiable work ethic, truly a pleasure in every aspect, such kind words." What do you think of that?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Yeah, I was thinking, "Wow!" Whoever wrote that they know a lot about me but it it's humbling. That's my first thought, it's that is humbling. It's also really nice to know that even though you don't hear, people observe the good in you, so that's great. I mean, I'm humbled. That's the first thought, it was humbling.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

As I'm sure you know, Osmosis has six core values, Start with the Heart, Spread Joy, Have Each Other's Backs, Imagine More, Open Your Arms and Reach Further. Do any of these values strike a chord with you?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Yeah. It's funny. We were talking about giving back, the importance of that and panning forward. I guess the one that most resonates with me is the heart. I think it's "Start with the heart." That's what it is. That one, because that's kind of have guided through my life is a spiritual guidance, but also my, as I start with my heart, too so I think that's important and especially in a profession-- Medicine is a profession that's very competitive, very challenging. I can't imagine going through the rigor that my students go through. They are brilliant, and I say all that to say that I have to-- I feel that I have to remind my students that they are supported, that we care about them and that we're in this together, so I try to remind them of that. That always takes me back to that core value about "Starting with the heart." I try to bring that into what I do because it's very important. Sometimes we miss it.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

COVID has definitely brought everyone unique challenges. What is your personal experience been this year and how have you approached your own challenges?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Yeah, that's a really good question. At the start of this crisis, we were in the middle of our dedicated Step 1 period, and unfortunately, half of our cohort, which we have a pretty big cohort-- Every year, we get about 300 medical students into the school. I think it's one of the largest in the country. We have a pretty big cohort, so we had half of our cohort had not set for Step 1 when they started to close down Prometic sites, so being one of the leaders of making sure that they get it done, it obviously was a very challenging time. It was stressful. Because no one knew nothing, no one knew when they would open or when alternative arrangements would be made, it was just a very challenging time.

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

I can say that I didn't work on helping our students get through that by myself. Myself and my colleagues worked really hard to make sure that our students had information, so anything that we knew about what was going on, we tried to make sure that we get them the information as soon as possible, and we continued to remind them that they were not alone and that we were in this together. That's kind of how we got through it. Because it seems like it was so far away but yet still not that far away it pains me to think about it because it was a very stressful time, but we got through it. We got through it and all of our students have sat now. We're going into another period of dedicated starting in January, so fingers crossed that our Prometric centers won't close. Yeah, it was a challenging time, but we got through it.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

Is there anything from that experience that you've learned about yourself or your students in general?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER:

What I can say that I learned about my students in particular is you think you put all this pressure on these jewels and eventually these jewels are going to crack and our students are under so much pressure, right? They are under an enormous amount of pressure. Again, I keep saying it. I don't know how they do it. They go through a lot., and so then you put this other weight, this pandemic on top of the pressure that they already have, and all I can say is students surprised me by just how they handle the situation, how they navigate it through the process and how they stayed upbeat. I mean, they just really were team players. They realized that we were working through that process together, so I commend them on how they handle the pandemic and being in a crisis and then having to deal with the pressure of taking step-- Some of our students had that test pushback three, four months past their step date, their original step date, so it was really stressful. I can't imagine being in that situation and preparing for a standardized exam, having a date set and a couple of days before your test, you get an email saying you can't take it, and then you don't know when you're going to sit. I think they handled that so well. They were so professional. Yeah, that's surprised me.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

What's next for you? What's next for your institution? Are you working on any projects now that you can tell us about?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Due to the pandemic and all of the changes that have been made, I, for certain, have really been thinking about how to improve what I do online, so improving our resources, improving all that we do in on a virtual way. There are some things that I'm working on in order to help improve what we already offer virtually. For example, the course that I teach, we have a lot of resources dedicated to Step 1 prep, but just helping it improve those and stretching the bar a little bit more, I know we actually worked with Osmosis this year on one of those projects to help provide our students during their dedicated period with a playlist for the high yield content for Step 1 prep, so those are the types of things that I'm working on and hopeful that we can make an impact, a huge impact on our student body.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

Here at Osmosis, we're an education company and being an education company, we love to fill knowledge gaps. Is there anything, any topic that you'd like to educate us on or the listeners on that you think everyone should know?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

You know, I am not an MD. I'm a PhD, so there's not any subject matter per se that I could speak to but my background is in learning. I'm always looking for ways to provide students with information that explores how to learn and how they learn, so metacognition. I'm always looking to find easy ways to explain brain science, even, how do we remember? What are keys of memorization? I'm always looking for ways to do that. That's probably something that I think is really important that adds to what our students already are learning, it is that material, and I say that, too, because it's a huge transition from being an undergraduate student and graduating with an undergraduate degree and then going into medical school.

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

I always use the water example. You come out of the undergraduate degree and you're drinking the water from your kitchen faucet, and then you go into medical education and all of a sudden you're drinking the water from the fire hydrant, right? That's outside. It's just a lot more water and it's coming at you really fast, and so because of that, it's really important for students to have a way to understand how can I change my learning skills to accommodate that. That's what I can add. I think that's really important.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

As we're all aware, an entire generation of students are graduating and entering the medical field during this unprecedented pandemic. Do you have any advice for them?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Like you said, we're in unprecedented times. There's so much going on and we can be consumed by a lot of different things. I know that work it's-- I can't imagine the pressure of positions right now and what their challenges are, but I think it's really important to go back to that, "Start with the heart." I say that because sometimes we tend to forget that. Everybody tends to forget that notion that compassion is just as important as anything when you're considering the profession, so just remind our students to be compassionate. You are working in a service industry. You're providing healthcare, which is a service, so be reminded that those patients depend on you. You are it, so just lead with the heart, start with the heart.

LINDSEY SMITH: 

That's it, Zsa-Zsa. Thank you so much for joining us and congratulations again on receiving this award. Obviously, very deserving. Do you have any parting thoughts or shout outs you'd like to give?

DR. ZSA-SZA BOOKER: 

Absolutely. The Office of Learning and Teaching, the team that I work with they are an amazing group of people. I don't do this alone. We work together. I'm always passing ideas through my colleagues. The person that I joined the team with, her name is Dr. Brennan. She is the person who really kind of trained me to do this, so I really lean on her a lot. I say a lot that I didn't do it by myself. I don't do the work that I do by myself, so I really would like to thank my team and including, he's not part of our team per se, Dr. Roger Sakeran. He's an amazing person as well. He provides really great leadership. We're going through a transition, so he's our interim boss for right now. He's an amazing person as well. I just would like to thank my team for all of their support and our students for being such great people. I work with a really, really great team of people and great students, brilliant students.