Get to know Dr. Deanna Chaukos, Professional Standards Curriculum Theme Lead

Dr. Deanna Chaukos is a Consultation/Liaison psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital, and Assistant professor at the University of Toronto. She completed her MD at the University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine, residency in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School Massachusetts General Hospital/ McLean Hospital, and fellowship in Consultation Liaison psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Her clinical expertise includes psychiatric care of patients with medical complexity, and she teaches across the developmental continuum from UME to subspecialty postgraduate programs. She is a dedicated educator, and recent recipient of the AFMC Young Educators Award. Deanna engages in education scholarship that utilizes an adaptive expertise theoretical framework to understand how we effectively prepare medical learners for future uncertain practice, including how to approach ambiguity in clinical care of complex patients.

She is the Associate Program Director for the University of Toronto Psychiatry Residency, and leads portfolios including assessment, resident wellbeing, and resident leader mentorship. She has extensive experience supporting curriculum development, implementation and program evaluation efforts across diverse medical education contexts, with a focus on integration of intrinsic CanMEDS roles. 

How did you discover what area(s) of medicine you are most passionate about?

In medical school, especially in preclerkship, I had the opportunity to work in a lab. Being immersed in the basic sciences taught me a lot about asking rigorous questions and also led me to think about what questions we don’t ask. I’m a hands-on learner, so these early lab experiences helped ground the preclerkship years for me.

In clerkship, I was surprised to learn how much I loved psychiatry. I had imagined a path for myself where I would pursue internal medicine and become a researcher. Instead, I discovered that psychiatry echoed the aspects that I enjoyed in my preclerkship years and provided the opportunity to ask those rigorous questions as well as reflect on the questions we don’t ask.

Now, my medical education research also allows me to explore these themes. My research focuses on adaptive expertise, I explore how we prepare learners for future uncertainty, especially in the care of patients with complexity.  This work has combined my love of research and teaching with my clinical passion for caring for populations with medical and psychiatric complexity.

What excites you the most about your role as Professional Standards Curriculum Theme Lead?

To me, this role is about helping our medical students feel “part of” the profession and the medicine community. Professional standards speak to both our accountabilities as physicians-towards rigour of practice and maintaining public trust-and it is also about cultivating a professional identity. I believe these two components go hand in hand; when we are passionate about the work that we do, hold ourselves to a high standard, and value the work of our team and other contributors, we cultivate professionalism.  Our world needs all kinds of physicians. We need generalists and specialists, enthusiasts and skeptics, advocates, scientists, clinicians, policymakers, QI experts and more.

I am excited about this role because medical school marks the beginning of the journey for students discovering who they are professionally. We, as educators, can help to cultivate sustainable practice in service of the patients who need us most, and feel part of a profession that needs what they have to offer.

What’s one thing you want MD students to know about professional standards?

That professional values evolve with societal change, and this kind of change demands nuance, reflexivity, discussion and perspective exchange and, perhaps especially, humility. As a U of T grad class of 1T2, I've seen the changes that have occurred in the faculty of medicine since I was a student, and our grads today can count on a similar pace of change being part of their career. 

Society needs all kinds of physicians, and cultivating a community that invites diverse perspectives, with recognition for diverse kinds of expertise is essential. It is essential because this is how we improve and make ideas better, make patient care better - and that is the part of professional standards that stays the same-our accountability to patients and to serving our communities.

How do you like to spend your time outside of work to take care of yourself and recharge?

I love spending time with my family. My kids are young, so we spend lots of time together at the playground and being outside always helps me keep things in perspective. I also love group exercise classes.

Thinking back to your own time in medical school, is there a piece of advice you would like to share with current MD students?

One of my mentors in residency used to say, “Take the work seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously,” and this is a piece of advice that has stuck with me over the years.

For me, this meant learning to hold myself “lightly” and finding trusted colleagues who I can laugh with, who will give me honest feedback when I need it, and who I can count on to validate my experience after a rough day. Medical school will make you feel vulnerable-you’re learning a lot of things for the first time and taking on more and more responsibility. There will be failures and moments you really step in it, but this is where growth and learning happen. Everyone experiences this, and we don’t talk about it enough. Productive struggle isn’t graceful. As Thich Nat Han says, “no mud, no lotus”.  Our job as educators is to create learning environments that have your back when failures happen – not to make the failures easier or comfortable, but to model that we’ve been there too, and the learning that happens from productive struggle builds expertise. 

How can students begin building a community of trusted peers and colleagues?

I encourage students to prioritize making connections and finding people they can talk to about your experiences in medical school. A great place to start is with your classmates or  teachers or preceptors you feel connected to. Perspective exchange is how we make sense of this path. If you struggle making those connections on your own, reach out to the Office of Learner Affairs (OLA). OLA has expert counsellors who can help with this kind of reflection and making connections. Once you have a circle of people you trust you will realize we’re all coping with similar challenges. Another one of my mentors used to say, “we compare our insides to other people’s outsides”, and when we talk to colleagues, we realize we have more shared experiences than you might think on the surface.