Meet Sara Schaefer, Director of the Adult Neurology Residency Program

Sara Schaefer, MD, MHS, associate professor of neurology, describes herself as “a self-proclaimed restless person.”

At Yale School of Medicine (YSM), she wears many hats. She’s a movement disorders neurologist. She just finished her first year as program director for the adult neurology residency program. She was also the director of the movement disorders fellowship—a title she passed on to Kathryn Zuchowski, MD on July 1. And when she’s not at the clinic or teaching, she’s a host of two podcasts.

“No day is really the same as the next, which is one of the reasons I love having all these different roles,” Schaefer says.

Schaefer first connected with the field of movement disorders in 2005 as an undergraduate researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. “My first introduction to neurology was movement disorders, and it stuck in the back of my mind the whole time,” she says.

As a clinician, she treats disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and tremors. One of the aspects she enjoys the most about her clinical work is that it’s mostly observational. “We don’t rely quite as much on things like imaging or diagnostic studies as we do histories and exams,” Schaefer explains. “It’s really getting back to basics, which I love.”

She also appreciates that she has a lot of therapeutic options to offer patients, including lifestyle changes, medication, surgical interventions. With intervention, most patients experience a substantial improvement in their quality of life, she says.

But most of all, she values the relationships she gets to build with patients over time. Beyond their medical history, she learns about their families, their careers, and what they like to do. “I especially like the elderly population,” Schaefer says. “They have so much to teach us, and I love getting to know them.”

Schaefer digs into patients’ unique health goals and learns what’s most important for them in terms of their quality of life. For many patients with neurodegenerative disease, there comes a time when symptoms are no longer responsive to intervention, and she finds it rewarding to help patients navigate through this period. “I enjoy the process of shuttling them through that acceptance and entering their next phase, especially once I formed a good relationship with them and know what’s important to them,” she says.

Schaefer has had a long-standing interest in medical education. In 2019, she received her Master of Health Sciences with a focus on medical education at YSM. As a master’s student, she noticed that the way educators taught movement disorder phenomenology, or the classification of abnormal movements, was highly variable. So, she developed an online, modules-based movement disorder phenomenology curriculum. Her curriculum is now used by educators all over the world.

Fast forward to today—Schaefer is the program director for the adult neurology residency program. Before entering this role, she served as the associate program director for seven years, where she was highly involved in curriculum development and assessing the performance of residents.

During the first year in her new role as director, she has been preparing to move the program into the new Adams Neurosciences Center at Yale New Haven Hospital, which is scheduled to open in 2027.

She also started an oversight committee to review the program’s curriculum and understand where to make changes. Next year, for instance, the department is introducing a neuroradiology morning report, a discussion that will give residents the opportunity to look at neurological imaging studies and learn from a neuroradiologist about how to read them.

In a similar vein, Schaefer has adjusted the program’s journal club, where residents dissect medical articles. In the past, it has only included the residents and maybe a single faculty member. “But our faculty is so rich with experience and knowledge,” Schaefer says. So, next year, journal club will be open for everyone in the department to weigh in. “That way, the residents can take advantage of all that expertise.”

But Schaefer is focused on the little things that help improve residents’ experiences as well. “I have a long to-do list, but so many of them are just little iterative things that I think cumulatively over the course of a couple of years, you’ll be able to see that these changes made a difference,” she says.

Morning report, for instance, used to be a time to hone residents’ clinical reasoning skills, but over time, it has evolved into a PowerPoint presentation of a case, she says. So, she developed a policy for attendings and residents on how to lead the morning report in a way that challenges residents to consider all pieces of a case and think through the steps they would take in approaching it.

“Clinical reasoning is something that’s otherwise difficult to teach, but morning report is the perfect format for it,” she explains.

Other changes focus on improving residents’ quality of life. “Things like, does this person really need to be here at 5:30 a.m., or can they come at 6:00 and get a little more sleep,” she explains. “Little teeny things in the end make a difference to the residents.”

Schaefer says what she loves most about her new role is being able to see the residents’ growth over the three years in the program and become more confident in their skills. “It’s the same as with my patients—I love to get to know them,” she says. “They have this wonderful balance of humility and confidence and seeing that develop over time is really gratifying.”

In 2018, Schaefer and her colleague Michele Matarazzo, MD, had a proposal to start an official podcast for the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. When the podcast launched the following year, it began as a monthly release in which they highlighted an interesting research article published in Movement Disorders or Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, the society’s official publications.

Since then, it has exploded into a weekly podcast with a team of nine hosts. They now highlight research published both in and outside of the society’s journals. Some weeks, experts discuss various hot topics in the field such as the microbiome’s role in movement disorders. Other weeks, they might talk about various clinical cases, or dive into the history of movement disorders. And each year, they conduct interviews at the society’s International Congress, highlighting important events that have occurred over that year.

“It’s been really cool to see the podcast grow from scratch,” says Schaefer, who also launched and hosts a career-oriented podcast named “Neurology Nuts and Bolts: Constructing Your Career.”

“When I became a faculty member, it was unbelievable to me how much I did not know,” she says. As a neurology resident, her education was heavily focused on medicine, but not so much the skills that come alongside practicing medicine such as understanding contracts or billing properly for visits. “So, I started this podcast because these things are under-taught across the board.”

Both podcasts are available on all podcast platforms.