Family Faculty Institute
As some of you may have gathered, our new funding has enabled us to concentrate on our family faculty programs in greater depth.  In February we surveyed all 70 participating families to learn more about the "highs" and "lows" of their experiences, why they participate, how we might better support family faculty, and solicit suggestions for improvement.  We're happy to report 30% of participating families responded to the survey.  In addition, we routinely solicit feedback from families who participate in all of the Family Faculty programs.  Based on their suggestions we are expanding and/or revising certain aspects of our recruitment, training and support of family faculty.

We would like to introduce our Family Faculty program assistant, Clare Plunkett.  She is invaluable in organizing the administrative piece of these programs and her voice is the one you will often hear on the phone, calling to ask about your availability to participate in a particular program. Recently, Clare has attended several of our evening meetings with families. We hope you had the pleasure of meeting her there.

On February 19th, all FIRST families (Families In Resident Student Teaching) were invited to join us for dinner at Sweetwater's restaurant to celebrate and recognize their contributions to teaching pediatric residents and, again, to obtain suggestions for program improvement.

On March 13th, twenty new families were invited to join us for a program orientation at our new Williston office.  At that meeting, families were able to learn more about the wide range of "teaching" options available to them.  These include our more familiar Medical Education Project, the pediatric residency program (FIRST), the Vermont ILEHP Program (Interdisciplinary Leadership Education for Health Professionals) and various parent panel presentations for a variety of student groups. We are currently planning a new family faculty program within the UVM School of Nursing, which is scheduled to begin in the Fall.  We will continue to schedule orientation sessions throughout the year, so if you'd like to attend the next one, please let us know and your name will be added to the list.

Finally, for the sake of clarity, we've created The Family Faculty Institute, as a way of organizing all of our "families as teachers" programs under one common name.  The Family Faculty Institute will sponsor speakers, informal social events and training opportunities for participating families throughout the year.  Call or email one of the program directors, Nancy Abernathey, Diane DeBella, or Jo Yoder to find out more about any of these opportunities.

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