Teaching students to be good doctors, learning from them how to be a better teacher

It is about 9 a.m. on a Friday as a group of third year medical students from the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine –six young men, one woman– file into room 106 at Academic Health Center 4. One of the students has brought fruit-filled croissants to share with the rest. The College of Medicine does not have summer sessions, but the rest of the university does; so the atmosphere feels more laid back than usual. However, Dr. Gagani Athauda looks all business, waiting for them in her crisp, long, white physician’s coat to lead the day’s case studies in psychiatry. Students say it’s not unusual for Athauda to arrive an hour early to be available to answer their questions or concerns.

“I’m pretty sure we all love her,” says Melvin Thomas, who is clearly not the only one who appreciates his teacher’s dedication. Athauda is the winner of a teaching trifecta of sorts. She was a double winner at the 2015 HWCOM Faculty and Student Awards, walking away with the Excellence in Medical School Teaching (Period 1) Award as well as the Faculty Advisor/Mentor of the Year Student Choice Award –and the FIU Faculty Senate recently voted to honor her with the Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching.

“I always wanted to teach,” Athauda says, “you feel really good when you see someone benefit from your knowledge.”

Athauda was only 10 when she was bitten by the teaching bug in her native Sri Lanka. Her first student was a neighbor and playmate. “She and I would play all day, but I’d also make time to teach her mathematics and science, and I really enjoyed it,” says Athauda, assistant professor, department of cellular biology and pharmacology.

She was hooked. She knew she wanted to be an educator, but also developed a love for medicine. Athauda got her medical degree from Rīga Stradiņš University in Latvia, and then completed training as a visiting research fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, where she studied urologic oncology, including the type of kidney cancer that had stricken her father. It was exciting work that included four U.S. patents for diagnosing and monitoring urologic cancer. Still, in the back of her mind she wanted to teach.

In 2006, she moved to Florida with her husband, and worked on important clinical translational research at UM’s Miami Project to Cure Paralysis until 2011 when her long-time wish came true: the opportunity to teach medical students at FIU.
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If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
–Albert Einstein
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Fast forward to June 2015. It is close to 11 a.m., and Athauda’s small group Psychiatry 1 class in AHC4 takes a short break.

While milling around the hallway, her students are not shy about discussing why she is one of their favorites. “I think there is a huge difference between being a great physician and a great teacher,” Thomas says. “She knows how to break it down so that it’s very understandable for students.”

Athauda says one of the keys to her teaching approach is “to create an atmosphere that is open for questions, that students feel comfortable in.” Because she knows some students are shy about asking questions, she makes it a point to approach them individually. She makes rounds, student by student, all the way to the back of the room (in larger classrooms) asking them if they have questions. And she takes notes. Yes, she takes notes of their questions so she can improve her future lectures.

“They ask questions, and that basically develops us. Each question makes you a better educator,” she says. “We talk about how we shape the future of our students, but don’t take the time to see how they shape us as educators.”

Athauda not only welcomes her students’ questions, she seeks their input.

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Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
–John Cotton Dana
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“She taught this ‘gastro’ course which I thought was excellent and then she emailed us to ask how we thought she could improve the course!” says third year student Edward Suh.

Suh is talking about course BMS6634: Gastrointestinal System & Medical Nutrition. When students were asked to evaluate Athauda’s performance in the course, they rated it 4.8 out of a possible 5 points. Not satisfied, she wanted to know how to make it better. “That’s the kind of passion she has,” Suh says.

It’s the kind of passion she hopes to pass on. In her last lecture, Athauda encourages her students to give back by coming back to FIU to team-teach with her and share their knowledge and expertise with future medical students. “That would be like having my dream as an educator come full circle,” she says.