mu2sd

Physician Innovator Track · Trainee setup

Set up your Notion workspace

A private, chronological record of your thinking, shared only with the faculty who review your work. This is the first thing you do, and it takes about half an hour.

You own the workspace. Faculty are guests in it. That arrangement is deliberate — the record is yours, and it stays yours after you graduate.

Before you write anything clinical

Nothing that could identify a patient, a family member, or a named colleague goes into Notion — not in a title, not in a photo, not in a passing detail that would let someone recognise the person. Raw field notes stay here and never reach a public repository, but the rule applies on both surfaces.

Step one

Get Notion

Use your institutional email if you have one. Eligible students and educators at accredited colleges and universities can activate the Education Plan at no cost.

  1. Create your account

    Go to notion.com and choose Sign up.

    • Use your institutional email where possible, and keep it as the main email on the account.
    • Create a personal, one-member workspace. Do not add faculty as workspace members — they come in later as guests on a single page.
  2. Activate the Education Plan if you are eligible

    • On desktop or web: Settings → Upgrade plan → Get free Education plan
    • Status is re-verified yearly.
    • If you are not eligible, the regular Free Plan is sufficient for this track.
  3. Install on your computer

    Download the macOS or Windows app from notion.com/desktop, then sign in with the account you just created.

  4. Install on your phone

    Search for Notion in the App Store or Google Play and sign in with the same account.

    This one matters more than it looks. Observation does not keep business hours, and the phone is how a three-in-the-morning entry actually gets written instead of remembered badly a week later.

  5. Confirm you can share privately

    • You can invite faculty to a specific page as a guest without adding them to your workspace.
    • Free Plan allows up to 10 external guests; the individual Education Plan allows up to 100.
    • You will need one or two. Either plan is enough.
What a faculty educator account does not change

Faculty do not need to own your workspace. You own it and invite them to the top-level track page as a guest. Their access follows the permissions you give. Your plan controls the guest limit, not theirs.

Step two

Build the workspace

Six work areas under one private parent page. They correspond directly to §3 of the Trainee Field Guide.

  1. Create one private parent page

    Select New page and create a blank page under Private. Name it Physician Innovator — [Your Name]. Keep it private while you build it out.

  2. Add the six work areas

    Inside the parent page, create six full-page databases — type /database → Table — or subpages containing databases.

    Work areaWhat it holds
    Field LogRaw dated observations. No solutions permitted in this database.
    Needs InventoryCandidate needs, one per row, each with a status: open, parked, retired, converged.
    Stakeholder RegisterWho you spoke with, their role, what surprised you, and what it changed.
    Decision LogConsequential choices: alternatives considered, evidence, and what would reverse it.
    AI LedgerOne row per substantive AI-assisted session. What you kept, and what judgment stayed yours.
    Weekly EntryOne dated reflection each week, written the same week.
  3. Add properties that will earn their keep

    Date, Select or Status, Text, and Person as appropriate. Every database item is also a page, so the body can hold the narrative while the properties stay scannable.

  4. Create the Weekly Entry template

    In Weekly Entry, use the arrow beside New, then New template. Add the prompts from Appendix A of the Trainee Field Guide so every week opens with the same structure and you are never staring at a blank page.

Step three

Share it with faculty

Sharing the parent page passes its permissions down to everything beneath it, including subpages you create later.

  1. Check the parent page first

    Open the top-level Physician Innovator page and confirm all six work areas sit beneath it. Anything created outside the parent will not inherit access, and faculty will silently not see it.

  2. Invite faculty by email

    Select Share, enter each reviewer's email, choose the permission level, and Invite.

    Use Can comment by default. Faculty respond in the margins; they do not rewrite your record. That is the whole point of the surface.

  3. Lock down general access

    In Share, set General access to Only people invited. Do not use "Anyone on the web with link" for this workspace. Copying a page link does not by itself grant access, but the setting is what actually holds the line.

  4. Test it before you begin

    Verify the names and permission levels. Open each work area and confirm it inherited access from the parent. Create one test Weekly Entry and ask a faculty reviewer to confirm they can see it and leave a comment.

    Do this now rather than discovering at your first review that nobody has been able to read anything for six weeks.

Then use it this way

  • Add a Field Log entry when the observation happens. Nights and weekends count, and are often where the most revealing things are.
  • Write one Weekly Entry every week, in the same week. Do not go back and rewrite history to look smarter than you were — the false starts are the evidence.
  • Before each individual review, make sure your current thinking and your open decisions are visible without anyone having to dig.
  • Faculty leave substantive feedback in Notion or the repository at least every two weeks. If two weeks pass in silence, say so.