Koyal Jain, MD, MPH, FASN, assistant professor in the division of nephrology and hypertension and director of undergraduate medical education in the department of medicine, is featured in a new UNC Health Foundation article discussing how students and faculty have connected during the pandemic year. She credits the students for keeping everyone afloat during a time of such great uncertainty.
“The students contribute so much…We forget how much the students teach us – it’s easy to get stuck in our ways and forget how things were as students, and they keep us grounded,” Jain said. “They give value to the work that we do.”
Jain has worked specifically on creating connections with her students, even in Zoom lectures. Some of her techniques are as simple as rotating through her roster of virtual lecture-attendees and asking specific questions about how they are handling things and spending their time outside of class. She says that even in her renal block – a portion of the first-year curriculum that can be notoriously challenging in the best of times – students are still feeling a sense of community.
“They feel that human connection,” Jain says in the article. “I try to connect with them, try to find out about their lives, join in the lecture early, share personal stories. It’s more about the human connection that can be lost virtually – we just do it together and think of ourselves as a team.”
One of the highlights of the nephrology curriculum this year was part of the Department of Medicine’s “A Day in the Life” series, where faculty try to supplement the basic knowledge of their lectures with a look into how certain specialties spend a normal day. In an attempt to further engage with her students, Jain called a diverse and motivated panel to shed some light on the world of nephrology.
Joined by Keisha Gibson, MD, Jerry Hladik, MD, and Prabir Roy-Chaudhury, MD, Jain took a group of medical students and undergraduates through an immersive look behind the curtain of a nephrologist’s life.
Read more from the UNC Health Foundation.