Physician, Know Thyself: Using Brand Management Principles to Build a Fulfilling Professional Identity (Wellness Committee- and Faculty Development Committee-Sponsored)

A career in academic medicine presents numerous opportunities, challenges, and decisions. Key milestones, such as choosing a specialty, developing expertise, managing setbacks, assuming leadership roles, and ultimately transitioning into retirement, often require navigating competing priorities, including academic promotion, institutional expectations, and family obligations. While mentorship can offer valuable guidance, it is not always readily accessible. A clear understanding of one’s professional identity is essential for successfully navigating these critical career decisions. Viewing professional identity through the lens of brand management offers a dynamic approach, allowing physicians to cultivate and express an evolving identity throughout their careers. A strong professional brand enhances reputation management, supports academic promotion, and promotes long-term career fulfillment. In this session, we will introduce a model of brand management for physician professional development. Participants will engage in reflective exercises to begin crafting their authentic professional brand and learn how to apply this brand to important aspects of their career, including academic promotion, reputation management, and career fulfillment.

Learning Objectives:

Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:
  • Articulate a model of brand management for physician professional development
  • Engage in reflective exercises to begin creating your authentic professional brand
  • Apply your professional brand to academic promotion, reputation management, & career fulfillment

Presenters:

  • Jeremy Branzetti, MD, MHP
  • Laura R. Hopson, MD, MEd
  • Linda A. Regan, MD, MEd
  • Michael A. Gisondi, MD
Authors

  • Jeremy Branzetti, MD, MHPE

    Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine

    Yale University

    Jeremy Branzetti, MD, MHPE, is a board-certified emergency medicine (EM) physician who received his doctorate of medicine from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook and received his MD. He completed a four-year residency in EM at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and was chief resident in his final year. Subsequently, he obtained a Masters in Health Professions Education from Maastricht University’s School of Health Professions, and certification as a Leadership and Professional Coach through ACT/Brown University. He has over a decade of experience in GME leadership and medical education scholarship, with extensive expertise in evidence-based learning science, adaptive expertise, professional identity development, and coaching as a faculty development tool. He is the founder of Academic Educator Coaching, and strives to use his accrued experience in academic medicine to coach medical educators to chart meaningful careers on their own terms.

  • Laura R. Hopson, MD, MEd

    Associate Chair of Education

    University of Michigan

    Laura R. Hopson, MD, MEd, is Professor and Associate Chair of Education in the Department of Emergency Medicine of the University of Michigan Medical School. She graduated from Yale University with a BS in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and obtained her MD from Duke University. She completed residency training at the University of Michigan, and a master’s in education through Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Hopson has been extensively involved in medical education at the undergraduate and graduate level throughout her career including nine years as residency program director. She co-directs the University of Michigan’s GME Innovations program which is an institutional initiative to promote innovations in education and demonstrates their effectiveness through high-level learner and patient centered outcomes. Dr. Hopson has a long-standing interest in the transition between UME and GME and her scholarly work focuses on the residency selection process and optimizing learning outcomes including the implementation of competency based medical education.

  • Linda A. Regan, MD, MEd

    Johns Hopkins University

    Dr. Linda Regan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins, where she serves as the Vice Chair for Education and the director of the Medical Education Fellowship. Dr. Regan served on the program committee for both SAEM and CORD for many years, including three years as a track chair for the CORD Best Practices track. She served for four years as a member of the Board of Directors of CORD and is a well-known national speaker on a wide array of educational topics, having spoken at ACEP, CORD, SAEM, ACGME, and AMEE. She is the current Chair of the ACGME’s Residency Review Committee in EM. Dr. Regan is well known at Johns Hopkins for her work as an educational program builder and 13 years spent as the program director for the Emergency Medicine residency. She obtained her Masters in Education for the Health Professions from the Johns Hopkins School of Education, with a focus on educational research. Dr. Regan’s educational research interests lay mainly in the applications of adult learning theories and conceptual models to postgraduate education, in particular as they pertain to the development of adaptive expertise for learners, as well as how to best teach and represent yourself as an educator.

  • Michael A. Gisondi, MD

    Professor and Vice Chair of Education, Department of Emergency Medicine

    Stanford University

    Dr. Michael A. Gisondi is professor and the inaugural Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Dean for Academic Advising at Stanford School of Medicine. He is the Principal and co-founder of The Precision Education and Assessment Research Lab (The PEARL). Dr. Gisondi is the recipient of numerous teaching awards including the Hal Jayne Excellence in Education Award from SAEM.

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