Susan Frankl, MD
Lepofsky Fellow in Medical Education
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Fellowship Project:
Development of an approach for fostering teaching of primary care in community-based practices
Dr. Susan Frankl is a general internist in practice at Beth Israel Deaconess: Chestnut Hill. Dr. Frankl received a BA in biology from State University of New York at Binghamton and her MD degree from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1983. She did her post-graduate training at the University of Washington Affiliated Hospitals, and completed a Fellowship in General Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1988. Prior to joining Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, she was Medical Director of the general medicine practice of the Evans Medical Group at Boston University Medical Center and directed ambulatory medicine training for the internal medicine residency training program where she developed their first written curriculum. During her year as the Lepofsky Fellow at the Carl J. Shapiro Institute for Education and Research in 2000, she began her work on faculty development for community-based teachers. In 2001 she joined the leadership of the Primary Care Clerkship (PCC) at Harvard Medical School and in that capacity she developed an initiative to introduce the use of portfolios in medical education. Currently, she serves as Director of Faculty Development for the PCC as well as the BIDMC site director. In 2008, Dr. Frankl joined the Harvard Academy Center for Teaching and Learning as a Faculty Consultant. There she has continued her work to create faculty development programs to support clinical teaching with emphasis in outpatient settings throughout HMS. Her work in faculty development initiatives for medical educators in the outpatient setting has been presented both locally and nationally. She has recently developed an innovative faculty development program using peer observation of teaching to enhance faculty teaching in the PCC. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the Academy Interest Group in Peer Observation and working in collaboration with her colleagues, she has worked on the development of peer observation instruments and a novel peer observation program in the Medical Ethics and Professionalism course. In addition, Dr. Frankl serves as Director of Medical Education for the Affiliated Physicians Group of BIDMC where she coordinates the teaching activities of approximately 50 physicians. As a primary care physician, Dr. Frankl continues to teach medical students in her Chestnut Hill, MA office.