The Pharmacoepidemiologist's Toolbox for Professional Empowerment

1. Course Aim
The course will address on multiple professional development topics with each lecture providing the necessary tools for the attendees to apply the discussed principles to their own career paths. Faculty will give and introduction to professional empowerment along with five, 30-minute-long didactic lectures, with 25-minute panel discussion with course faculty to further discuss the importance of professional development. In total the course will consist of approximately 3.5 hours of instruction in real-time with 15 minutes of break included.

2. Requisites Statement
This should state a) whether other courses or level of expertise (Entry, Intermediate, Advanced level) is expected and b) any precourse materials need to be accessed or reviewed

All audiences are welcome. It is suggested that all participants take the personality test (https://www.16personalities.com/) or (Free Big Five Personality Test - Accurate scores of your personality traits (truity.com) prior to the course. **No payment required**

3. Course Objectives

a. Understand the concept of authenticity in the workplace with a focus on conflicts between personal identity and professional environment, as well as discuss practical techniques for sharing personal aspects of one’s identity in the workplace without overstepping professional boundaries or risking discomfort.
b. To recognize signs of toxic perfectionism within themselves and their research teams, understand its detrimental effects on productivity, morale, and innovation in research environments, and implement strategies to mitigate its impact while fostering a culture of growth, collaboration, and resilience among team members.
c. To understand when and how to negotiate for maximum benefit.
d. To define a personal process for determining which meetings are needed. To consider how to prepare when participating or leading a meeting, ways to engage during meetings, and expectations for follow-up to different types of meetings. To recognize types of critical meetings and compare options for prioritizing them.
e. Share a set of communication tools with technical experts to assist in the simplification and distillation of technically dense content into easily understood messaging.

4. Syllabus Outline

--Introduction to professional empowerment (20 minutes)
Dr. Vin Lo Re, FISPE (Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Epidemiology, Senior Scholar in the Penn Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Senior Investigator in the Penn Center for Pharmacoepidemiology Research and Training, University of Pennsylvania)

--Bring your authentic whole(?) self to work (30 minutes)
Dr. Juan Hincapie Castillo (Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

In this session, participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of authenticity in professional contexts, emphasizing its implications for navigating conflicts between personal identity and organizational culture. Additionally, the presenter will discuss actionable strategies for effectively sharing personal aspects of one’s identity at work while maintaining professionalism and mitigating potential discomfort.

Reference:
Authenticity, Identity, and Being Yourself at Work (HBR Work Smart Series) by Harvard Business Review, Susan David, Talisa Lavarry, Lily Zheng, Melody Wilding. 2024

-Breaking free from being perfect (30 minutes)
Dr. Lisa Pont, FISPE (Deputy Head of School Graduate, School of Health, Professor at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia)

You have been working on a manuscript for the past few months but no matter how hard you work, it is never as good as you would like it to be. You keep re-working it, starting again over and over, but you just can’t get it perfect. Sound familiar? Well, you're in good company. Today, we're rolling up our sleeves to uncover how toxic perfectionism can sneak into our work, wreaking havoc on productivity, innovation, and team dynamics. But we're not just here to talk about the problem. We're here to look at practical tools and strategies to deal with toxic perfectionism and create a culture where progress and resilience thrive.

--Negotiation: Thinking like a gambler (30 minutes)
Dr Robert Platt (Professor at McGill University, Montreal)

Negotiation is an important skill that plays a part in our daily work and personal lives. We negotiate all the time. Thinking like a gambler and recognizing uncertainty gives a platform on which to assess negotiations, while considering both your and your counterpart's interests helps lead to a solution that is best for the long term. Finally, knowing when to walk away, and knowing your alternatives, is critical to a good negotiation.

--All the meetings you need to have (and, how to have them) (30 minutes)
Dr. Mary Beth Ritchey (Chief Scientific Officer at CERobs Consulting; Associate Research Professor, Rutgers University)

There are too many meetings. GIFs, TikToks, and even coffee mug sayings lament “another meeting that could have been an email.” Such meetings decrease our deep work and can lead to dissatisfaction and disengagement in our jobs. However, some meetings are needed. Some meetings propel our projects forward or help us to become better researchers, team members, and leaders. This session will introduce different types of meetings, better engagement in those that are important, and decreasing involvement in all the meetings. Additionally, participants will learn of solutions for planning and executing meaningful meetings.

--Wait –- What did you say? (30 minutes)
Hope Mueller (SVP, Corporate Development & Strategy Currax Pharmaceuticals LLC )

It is imperative that technical experts can communicate their findings, recommendations, and asks into easily understandable formats. There are straightforward communication tools that every technical expert should know and understand to translate their content into something digestible by lay and C-Suite personnel. The participants will be better prepared to present and share their information, and their audience will better understand the message the technical expert is communicating.

--Panel Discussion/ Q&A with course faculty (25 minutes)