Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm Chris
Sosa, the copy chief here at Becker's, and
I'm thrilled to be joined by doctor Eric
Gantwerker, a pediatric otolaryngologist
in Northwell Health and associate professor at the
Zucker School of Medicine. Eric, thank you for
joining us today. Thanks so much for having
me.
Eric, you have your your hands in so
many different buckets. You do so much in
the health care space.
But for those, in our audience who are
maybe not familiar with you and your work,
could you please introduce yourself and tell us
a little bit more about your background?
Absolutely. Thank you, Chris. So I'm Eric Gammwicker.
I'm a practicing pediatric otolaryngologist in New York
at at Northwell Health, and obviously teach at
the medical school. And sort of my
presence and my identity is sort of focused
on really three different areas, and that's obviously
being a a good clinician surgeon
and taking care of kids especially with airway
problems, tracheostomy,
complex air digestive, and, complex sleep. And then
I sort of live in the education world.
You know, I have a master's in medical
education, and my real focus is on professional
development and creating the next generation of surgeon
educators. And then I live in this technology
world, especially with extended reality,
like virtual reality, augmented reality, and also doing
a lot of work in the artificial intelligence
space as it intersects both clinical practice as
well as education.
Yeah. That's all very fascinating,
Eric. I'm not sure we can cover all
of it today, but I do wanna cover
as much as possible. So let's just start
with this. So what are your top priorities
today in terms of pediatrics?
Yeah. So, you know, I think there's a
lot of stuff on the clinical side as
well as the technology and education side. On
the clinical side, obviously, you know, we're trying
to just advance and practice in an era
of technology. Right? And so I'm trying to
teach the next generation how to leverage technology
and then telling faculty how to teach the
next generation
with technology to try and integrate it into
clinical practice. So that includes ambient listening and
AI. That includes all the LLM and clinical
decision making support that's gonna come with the
integration of AI into health care. And I've
started to dab a little bit into sort
of the informatics world, and starting to do
some some work there, especially as it integrates
with technology and and AI.
I think from an educational standpoint, I think
just creating the next generation of educators,
and even today's educators to understand that there's
going to be a future of health care
that's gonna be supported by technology.
And
trying to
teach faculty to not focus on content, more
on concept, and then how
students can leverage technology in real time to
access some of that more declarative knowledge, the
stuff that the facts that people don't really
need to know on a day to day
basis, and focus more on that conceptual foundational
model and practicing
applying
to novel problem solving. And then from a
technology standpoint, obviously, trying to teach faculty how
to use these new tools. And
next generation of educators and surgeons and
students already know and already using these technologies,
so they have to teach up a little
bit.
Eric, where do you find the most resistance
in terms of
helping surgeons and and other physicians adapt to
all this technology? And what is your best
what's your best advice for helping to overcome
that?
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of barriers.
Obviously, you know, in medicine, we're very traditionalistic.
And so there's a lot of people who
say, well, you know, the next generation of
educators
or the next generation of surgeons rather,
are they just
they need to learn the way that we
learned. Right? So they need to learn all
the different details and minutia and stuff, and
they hearken back to times when everything was
in a text book and not available to
them in real time. And so I think
there's a huge barrier to understand
that the way that they teach is predicated
on a on a antiquated
model of how education was
done before technology was enabled. If you think
today's
students,
as as far as somebody who's starting medical
school today, they've never known a world without
technology. We're getting to the point where they've
never known a world without tel cell phones.
So, you know, just think about that generation
and saying, oh, well, you need to read
a book. Well, books are out of date
by the time they're published.
And so we have to think more,
more creatively about how to
get these, faculty to teach in a different
way, and to understand that the next generation
also
of students are using multimedia, they're using technology,
and they just don't learn the way that
that other students learn. So I think there's
just a cultural barrier, I think. And again,
trying to get them to understand that students
don't learn the way that they learn. They
have different tools. They're gonna have practice medicine
in different way.
You obviously have a lot of the Luddites,
the people who are just anti technology, and
think that, you know, AI is gonna come
take their jobs.
Those are hard people to overcome, because they're
sort of set in their ways. But again,
just showing them the tools that educators can
have. You know, I do a lot of
AI faculty development to understand how LLMs
and some of the different softwares can help
them educate,
creating case based learning questions,
doing,
you know, more simulation based stuff using technology.
And I think once they sort of see
the tools and they get their hands dirty
with the tools, it can overcome some of
those barriers for people who are typically late
adopters.
So, Eric, if you can paint a picture
for our audience a little bit here. So
when a student walks into your classroom
at the medical school,
what should they expect?
Yeah. So number one, they should expect not
to be talked at, but talked with.
So again, I still ground everything in theory
and bringing theory to practice, and everything we
know about education and the cognitive science of
learning is you need to be active in
your learning. You can't be passive. And so
I will never give a lecture. I don't
even call it a lecture. All of my
didactics are discussions,
and I very much believe in the Socratic
method, which again was not asking inane questions.
It's trying to challenge people's knowledge, and trying
to have them access that prior knowledge and
apply it to novel context and integrating new
knowledge. So one of the things you'll always
expect with me is I will find out
what you know. I will identify misconceptions, and
I will target that lesson specifically
to where you are and where you need
to go, as opposed to just delivering
a lecture or pontificating based on where I
think you should be. Because, again, we need
to take people to the next step, and
if you are way below people's knowledge level
and skill level, you're gonna lose them. And
if you're way above, you're gonna lose them.
So you need to have some kind of
ability to access where they're at in their
knowledge base and where they need to go.
So my sessions are never the same. I
never give the same discussion twice, because it's
always student led. It's always having you critical
think,
and,
I think trying to apply that knowledge immediately.
So instead of just delivering knowledge without having
you apply it, I have you immediately apply
that knowledge into some kind of problem solving
context so that you can integrate into your
knowledge base.
Eric, you mentioned that you've
had plenty of experience in the VR and
gaming space. I mean, what led you to
that in particular?
Yeah. I think my entry point really was
through education. I was always very passionate about
education, and my my father was a grade
school teacher in in the sit, down in
in Chicago,
and a public school teacher rather. And so
I always loved education, but my dad wouldn't
let me go into education, so instead I
went to medicine.
I followed my my brother's footsteps, and so
I think when I got into the education
space, and I started doing especially my masters,
technology was really taking off, and XR was
making a revival.
And really, the technology was advancing, and I
was able to sort of fine tune my
educational masters
focused on product development educational technology.
And,
these technologies were hitting at the same time.
And so that sort of sparked that curiosity.
And, you know, I got an opportunity to
be a medical director for a video game
startup that was using these to create experiential
learning, and so I got a lot of
product development start up entrepreneurial type spirit with
that, and through that, I learned a lot
more about how product design, technology,
and all those different applications
can be applied to medical education, surgical education.
I think that's really what sort of sparked
it. And then I sort of continued on
with that passion and trying to integrate into
everything I do.
Switching gears here a little bit, Eric. So,
certainly, as you mentioned,
the example I love that you said, you
know, when
a textbook comes out, it's
obsolete. The knowledge, you know, just doesn't last,
you know, for very long because everything's changing.
In terms of change, how do you anticipate
your role is gonna change, and how is
the role of your team gonna change over
the next eighteen months or so?
Yeah. I mean, everything is going so fast.
You know, you it's impossible to keep up
with everything that's going on. And I think
as far as my role is concerned, you
know, I'm continuing to try to figure out
how I can integrate
education technology into my everyday practice besides being
a full time clinician.
And so my role is ever evolving. Like
I said, I'm getting involved a little bit
into informatics and trying to integrate that into
my experience. I'm doing a lot of research
in extended reality. I'm doing a lot of
faculty development around surgical education.
And I think continuing my role on that
at our institution as well as on a
national international level is really what I'm hoping
to achieve over the next eighteen months. And
I think the other fact is is we
have to understand that AI is not gonna
be a fad. AI is real. It's gonna
change the way that we practice medicine, and
the tools that are getting created,
you can sit by and say, oh, I'm
not gonna use AI, and the tools are
gonna be created without you. And so I
think you need to be as a frontline
clinician understand how these tools are being integrated,
what's good and what's bad. Because again, people
are very overwhelmed when they get introduced to
these technologies, not totally understanding how they're being
integrated,
and the fact that clinicians aren't always at
the frontline of integration.
So as clinicians, we need to be at
that front line. We need to be at
the table, and we need to help guide
and say, this is actually gonna be useful
for us. And get away from that fear
that your jobs are gonna be taken as
opposed to understanding what the dyad of a
clinician and technology are going to be over
the next eighteen months.
Eric, you mentioned that your projects have an
international reach.
How far are we talking about? Like, what
what other countries and systems are are you
connecting with to to work on creating the
next generation of,
surgeon educators?
That's a great question. I've I've been very
fortunate to be involved in several organizations at
the international level and having lots of friends.
I have a lot of friends who I
went through as far as my master's program
in Thailand, Australia,
The UK, and I've been in all those
places trying to do education, and trying to
understand the local context, which is obviously very
different from The United States. And in many
ways, a lot of these other countries are
much more advanced in their integration of technology
for a variety of different reasons.
And so I've been very fortunate to talk
to the Association for Surgeons and Training in
The UK. I gave a talk at the
Future of Surgery Conference on surgical education technology
and gaming. That was a huge opportunity. I
went to Australia and talked at Monash University,
where one of my very, very good friends
is Emeritus,
and got opportunity to do some of that
stuff. And a lot of my friends through
the Harvard Macy Institute, who, again, are all
over the world,
have been very fortunate to engage with me
in those in those discussions.
And I just, I'm very passionate about education,
as you can see in the application of
technology, and finding like minded people across the
world has been revival
been
identifying people across the world that share my
passion has fostered and empowered me to continue
on. And I'm also part of the,
I'm also part of the International Association
for Health Professions Education, formerly known as the
Association for Medical Education Europe, and have been
leading their surgery interest group special interest group.
And so, again, trying to understand the context
of surgery, what's new, and what's,
amazing across surgical education
across the world, not just in The US.
Eric, all of that is very exciting. I
can't believe you're you're
working on so many things at one time.
I don't know how you have the bandwidth,
but certainly, it's a great thing that you
do.
Piggybacking off of that, this will be my
last, may major question for you to do
partner. So what else are you excited about
right now, and what's making you a little
bit nervous about pediatrics?
Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, I'm excited about
technology and where we're gonna go.
What makes me nervous is several things. So
I think
the lack of regulation
and understanding of the impact that artificial intelligence
is gonna have on clinical practice
makes me very nervous because we're already behind
the eight ball. These technologies are advancing so
fast,
and these bodies, especially in healthcare, just aren't
equipped to be able to to anticipate.
They're much more reactive, and so you're way
behind the eight ball. I gave a talk
at a conference a few years back, a
couple years back actually,
and the room was full of editors in
chiefs. And I asked as part of that
talk, raise your hand if you have a
plan to how to how to handle
AI in scholarly work, or at least have
a idea of what that you're talking about
it. And zero people raised their hands.
And at that moment, I turned to them,
and I said, you better think about it
now because this is yesterday. You you need
to solve those problems now. And still, a
lot of institute a lot of institutions and
journals are still trying to figure out what
their policy on AI is. How are they
gonna prevent plagiarism?
How are we gonna do narrative assessments and
know that students haven't used AI? And obviously,
we have AI detection software, but we have
AI evasion software. And so it's a AR
arms race that we may not be participating
in. And so I think there's a lot
of ethical, legal, and regulatory things that we
should all be mindful of over the next
several months, over the next several years rather.
And we really need to get on the
ball to try and figure out how we're
going to guide
ethical
use of these tools.
Eric, thank you for being so generous with
all your time and your insights today. Absolutely
cannot wait to share them with our audience.
We appreciate you coming out with us, and
we can look forward to connecting with you
again soon, I hope. Awesome. Thanks so much,
Chris. Thanks for having me.