18 Faculty Selected as Inaugural Longitudinal Coaches for MD Students

Eighteen Yale School of Medicine (YSM) faculty have been selected as coaches for the school’s new Longitudinal Coaching Program. Starting with the incoming MD class, a coach will be assigned to each student; the coach will work with the student throughout their YSM undergraduate medical education training, supporting the student’s professional development and reviewing individual progress in meeting the milestones toward attaining YSM’s nine MD Program competencies. In this inaugural year, each coach will be paired with five to six students. This initiative stems from the 2022 Yale School of Medicine Strategic Plan for Medical Education; it is one of the action items in the plan to advance student engagement in attaining competency, which Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) Dana Dunne, MD, MHS and Professor of Medicine (General Medicine) Michael Green, MD, co-developed.

YSM’s nine competencies are the knowledge, skills, and attributes that all MD students should achieve to be prepared for the next phase of medical training. Each competency is further defined by the school’s educational program objectives (EPOs), with measurable or observable milestones for each of the three phases of the MD curriculum—pre-clerkship, clerkship, and advanced training period.

Longitudinal coaches will help students monitor their progress in meeting these milestones by, together with the student, reviewing the student’s formative and summative assessments, self-reflections, narrative feedback, and other relevant data. They will assist their students in identifying progress and achievement, as well as areas for improvement or potential concern across the four-year curriculum. Coaches will work with each of their students to develop goals and action plans that are customized to the student’s needs and learning style. The coaches, as part of a larger team, also help students overcome learning challenges.

The coach and student pairs will be grouped by academic advisor and assigned to the new “colleges,” which the school is also creating to implement the medical education strategic plan. As members of the curriculum team embedded within the colleges, the coaches will act as a conduit between the Office of Curriculum and Office of Student Affairs to promote student success.

Faculty longitudinal coaches

The following YSM faculty have been selected for the program, which Dunne is leading as inaugural director of the Longitudinal Coaching Program:

Stephen Baldassarri, MD, MHS, assistant professor of medicine (pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine)

Kirsten Bechtel, MD, professor of pediatrics (emergency medicine) and of emergency medicine

Vanessa Cooper, MD, assistant professor of neurology

Ferenc Czeyda-Pommersheim, MD, assistant professor of radiology and biomedical imaging

Robert Elder, MD, associate professor of pediatrics (cardiology) and internal medicine (cardiology)

Ada Fenick, MD, associate professor of pediatrics (general pediatrics)

Howard Forman, MD, MBA, professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, in the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, of economics, of management and of public health (health policy)

Brian Fuehrlein, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry

Joanna Gibson, MD, PhD, associate professor of pathology

Yeisid Gozzo, MD, associate professor of clinical pediatrics (neonatal-perinatal medicine)

Alex Koral, MD, BS, assistant professor of clinical pediatrics (gastroenterology)

Stephanie Leeds, MD, assistant professor of clinical pediatrics (immunology)

Andrés Martin, MD, PhD, Riva Ariella Ritvo Professor in the Child Study Center and professor of psychiatry

Mahan Mathur, MD, associate professor of radiology and biomedical imaging

Caroline Nelson, MD, assistant professor of dermatology

Farzana Pashankar, MD, MRCP, MBBS, professor of pediatrics (hematology/oncology)

Pamela Petersen-Crair, MS, MD, MPH, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry

Christopher Sankey, MD, associate professor of internal medicine