Hello, I'm
Kiki Lombarts
professor professional performance AMC
An introduction
The common thread through my working life can be summarized as 'doctors and quality'. Or more specifically, the quality of (the functioning of) medical specialists. For more than 30 years I have been researching, following, advising and guiding them. I talk with and about doctors, watch them and sometimes keep an eye on them. It keeps me fascinated.
On this website I tell you more about it and you can read what it has yielded (my performance), what occupies me now (my news ) and what I am working on (my agenda)..
Nieuwtjes...
With all the attention and innovations in residency training , program directors (PD) and supervisors have taken on a significant number of additional tasks and responsibilities. This could not—and cannot—happen without considerable focus on faculty development: activities that teaching faculty undertake to improve their knowledge, skills, and behaviors as educators, teachers and supervisors. These activities have been strongly supported by the emergence of learning centers (Leerhuizen), the expanding range of professional development offerings, and numerous thematic conferences—including the assessment and evaluation of the knowledge and skills gained (think of site visits, training climate surveys, feedback from residents, etc.).
Nevertheless, increasingly more is being asked and expected of teaching faculty. As is typical for doctors, they do their best to meet these expectations—as well as they can. The result is impressive: as of 2025, terms such as competency-based education, portfolios, EPAs (Entrustable Professional Activities), mini-CEXs (Korte Klinische Beoordelingen), individualization, and training plans have become familiar vocabulary for medical specialists with a teaching role.
But there are limits.
While the professionalization of didactic expertise is, of course, never “finished,” additional demands are being placed on teaching faculty on top of their current commitments. After all, high-quality training is influenced by workforce shortages, the threatened (and experienced) work-life balance, insufficient alignment between education and clinical care, part-time work and scaling up, increasing bureaucratization, healthcare digitalization, and financial constraints. Faculty cannot (unfortunately) keep all of these developments out of residents' learning environment. And so, they must deal with them.
But "they" does not refer solely to the individual trainer—or perhaps even to the trainers' group. PD's and supervisors can only function optimally if they are optimally supported in their educational role and tasks. That is why it is time to shine a spotlight on the teaching climate, a concept we coined in the accompanying article in Academic Medicine. In Defining a Supportive Teaching Climate for Clinical Supervisors in Residency Training, researchers Anne van Graafeiland et al. present what (head) trainers consider to be a constructive teaching climate.
How do residents learn to become compassionate healthcare providers? Doctors – and patients! – consider compassion to be an important aspect of patient care, yet the subject of ‘compassion’ is not part of the medical curriculum. In practice, residents often learn a great deal by ‘observing’ their supervisors; modeling behavior thus becomes an important teaching strategy. In this study, we examined whether medical residents observe compassionate behavior in their supervisors and to what extent they view their supervisors as role models. Furthermore, we were interested in whether residnets observed differences between female and male supervisors. The good news is that, in general, residents positively evaluate the compassionate behaviors of their supervisors. Moreover, supervisors who received higher ratings from residents for ‘showing compassion toward patients and their families’ were also more often seen as role models by residents. Interestingly – and in line with socio-historical gender expectations – female supervisors scored significantly better in displaying compassionate behavior, but male supervisors received more appreciation for demonstrating compassion. For further reading, see this article by Rosa Bogerd et al., which was published today in Perspectives on Medical Education.