Education & Academic Affairs
Vincent Quagliarello, MD, Vice Chair, Education & Academic Affairs
Dana Dunne, MD, MHS, Associate Chair, Education & Academic Affairs
Faculty Development
Several faculty development initiatives took place over the past year. The Department of Internal Medicine initiated a monthly Zoom faculty development series called [IM]EDucators open to all members of the faculty. After four successful pilot sessions were held in the spring of 2021, this academic year has 10 sessions planned, with such topics as establishing a positive learning climate; giving more effective verbal and/or written feedback; bystander training for harassment and mistreatment; and more. These are advertised monthly through the department calendar, email announcements, and individual sections. Department faculty who led the sessions included Dana Dunne, MD, MHS; Vincent Quagliarello, MD; Katie Gielissen, MD, MHS; Matthew Grant, MD; Seonaid Hay, MD; Susan Kashaf, MD, MPH; Laura Morrison, MD; Sarita Soares, MD; Shaili Gupta, MBBS; Darin Latimore, MD; and Donna Windish, MD, MPH.
In addition to these faculty, other members of the [IM]EDucator faculty development group include Benjamin Doolittle, MD, MDiv; Naseema Merchant, MBBS; John P. Moriarty, MD; Chris Sankey, MD; Mark D. Siegel, MD; and Thilan Wijesekera, MD, MHS.
The Office of Education provided access to intense clinical teaching faculty development courses offered by Dunne through the Teaching and Learning Center. Yale offered its second annual Yale-ACGME course on “Improving Faculty Competency in Assessment,” directed by Dunne, Soares, and Michael Green, MD. Serving as one of fourteen regional ACGME faculty development hubs, the Yale ACGME course was offered virtually in February- March of 2021 with capacity enrollment of faculty across GME. A one-day version was offered in November 2021. Under the leadership of Windish, the department’s Advancement of Clinician-Educator Scholarship Faculty Development Program welcomed the latest cohort. This year, 14 fellows from the Departments of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics participated in a one-year Fellows as Medical Educators certificate program.
Office of Education Priorities
A major initiative within the department this year involves timely and effective written and verbal feedback. Strategies are in place to increase the proportion of med hub evaluations submitted by faculty on trainees within 14 days; and “Feedback Fridays” have been reintroduced to routinize face-to-face bidirectional feedback between faculty and trainees. Working toward a culture of psychological safety throughout all levels of the department will generate honest and effective feedback.
Teaching Awards 
- Traditional Residency Teaching Awards: Lydia Aoun-Barakat, MD, and Gretchen Berland, MD, won the Fred S. Kantor Teacher of the Year Award. Berland also won the Primary Care Center Humanism Award. Jurgen Holleck, MD, won the Asghar Rastegar Teacher of the Year Award. Benjamin Gallagher, MD, won the PCC Teaching Award. Jana Christian, MD, won the Marcella Nunez Smith Award for Achievements in Antiracism in Medicine.
- Primary Care Program Teaching Awards: Gielissen was awarded the Yale Primary Care Core Faculty Teaching Award. Sankey was awarded the Edwin C. Cadman Teacher of the Year Award for Yale New Haven Hospital-based non-core faculty. Nicole Altorelli, MD, received the George Thornton Primary Care Community Teacher Award.
- Med-Peds Program Teaching Awards: Jaideep Talwalkar, MD, was awarded the Brendan Kelly Award for APDs from the Medicine-Pediatrics Program Director Award.
- Medical School Teaching Awardees: This year included several faculty: Stephen Huot, MD, PhD (Francis Gilman Blake Award); Sarah Hull, MD, MBE (Charles Bohmfalk Award); Talwalkar (Alvan Feinstein Award); Silvia Vilarinho, MD, PhD (John N. Forrest, Jr. Prize for Mentorship in Student Research); Anna Reisman, MD, (Leah Lowenstein Award); and Matthew Grant, MD (PA Program Outstanding Didactic Course Award).
Clerkships
The clerkship experience for the Yale School of Medicine Classes of 2022 and 2023 continued to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. While all clerkship students resumed clinical activities in July 2020 after a three-month hiatus, the duration of clerkships, including inpatient and primary care medicine, was shortened and grading changed to pass/fail. Student-specific didactics for all 100 students per class were accomplished via Zoom over a two-week period with some remaining embedded in the clerkship rotation. One such embedded experience included the simulations during which students are exposed to a ‘sim’ patient with a variety of presentations. They work through a focused history and physical to arrive at a tentative diagnosis that they start to manage. The 30-minute simulated experience is followed by a teaching session given by a resident in any of our department residency programs, most typically as part of the residency Clinician-Educator Distinction. The entire simulation was successfully moved to the virtual space between July 2020 and July 2021, thanks to significant collaboration with the Yale Center for Medical Simulation.
Residency Updates 
Primary Care Program Innovations
- A novel curriculum for nutrition and lifestyle medicine was added to our ambulatory curriculum.
- The Point of Care Ultrasound Curriculum was expanded so that all primary care residents now have training in point-of care ultrasound.
- All PGY-2 residents received an ambulatory block rotation focused on innovations in practice design and payments models for primary care.
Medicine-Pediatrics Program Innovations
- Our innovative Quality Improvement initiatives have resulted in several panel management projects, resulting in two published papers; two papers under review; and several poster presentations.
Traditional Program Innovations
- Journal club was reinstituted under the leadership of Joseph Vinetz, MD; Rupak Datta, MD/PhD, MPH; and Guangyu Tong, PhD
- Morning Report was moved to the noon hour to expand access to a greater portion of the residency.
- The Noon Conference Schedule was moved to a 3 p.m. afternoon didactics section.
- The new Race, Bias, and Advocacy in Medicine (RBAM) Distinction Pathway was developed under the leadership of our recent chief resident, Jana Christian, MD. The RBAM Distinction open to all residents in the department is now under the leadership of Aba Black, MD, MHS.
- An advocacy and equity curriculum for first- and third-year residents was introduced into our ambulatory block.
Medical Grand Rounds
Major initiatives this year include:
- Second Century of Women in Medicine Medical Grand Rounds (MGR) to honor junior and mid-level women faculty who are emerging leaders in their fields.
- Dr. Jackie Satchell MGR to honor the late Jacqueline Satchell, MD, a faculty member in the Section of General Internal Medicine and attending physician at VA Connecticut Healthcare System.
- Creation of a new honorary lecture, the Sperling Foundation MGR, focused on health economics.
- Continuation of the highly popular “Stories of Yale Internal Medicine Grand Rounds,” in which trainees and faculty present 1,200-word stories about the human aspect of training or patient care.
- Continuation of “Discovery of the Week” five-minute vignettes at the beginning of MGR by faculty or trainees to highlight recent seminal contributions to biomedical discovery in our department. These are meant to complement the “Case of the Week” vignettes given by our chief residents.
- Continuation of the Research-in-Residency MGR to highlight three original research projects completed by our residents participating in the Research-in-Residency Program. This event included a virtual poster presentation created by Amy Anderson on the department’s communications team.
- Creation of a “DEI Case of the Week,” in which chief residents describe a case in which an important lesson related to diversity, equity, and inclusion was learned.
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