Charles S. Day, MD, MBA
Rabkin Fellow in Medical Education
Assistant Professor in Orthopedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Fellowship Project:
The effectiveness of the musculoskeletal curriculum at Harvard Medical School
Dr. Charles Day is the Chief of the Division of Hand and Upper Extremity Surgery in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an Assistant Professor in Orthopedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Day grew up in the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southern California, and completed his undergraduate studies in Human Biology at Stanford University where he graduated with Honors and Distinction. He spent the next four years at the University of California, San Francisco where he received his M.D. with thesis degree. After moving to the east coast, he completed his orthopedic surgery residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which included a two-year academic basic science research fellowship. In recognition of his work, the American Society for Surgery of the Hand honored Dr. Day with two awards and funded a grant for continuation of his research. During his residency, he attended the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh business school part time. The school selected Dr. Day to speak at the MBA graduation ceremony. He finished his formal clinical training with an orthopaedic hand surgery fellowship at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital of Washington University, St. Louis.
As a Rabkin Fellow at the Institute, Dr. Day completed an educational project assessing the effectiveness of the musculoskeletal curriculum at Harvard Medical School, across all four years. The preliminary results were presented as a poster at the 2005 Education Day at Harvard Medical School and as a podium at the 2005 AAMC Northeast Regional Group on Educational Affairs conference. As a result of his endeavors in this project, he developed the four-year musculoskeletal medicine educational objectives for the HMS Musculoskeletal Task Force, and is actively integrating these objectives in the reform of the HMS curriculum. He teaches in various HMS courses spanning all four years including Human Body, Patient-Doctor II, Surgery Clerkship, and Advanced Clinical Anatomy. For these teaching endeavors, he was nominated for a HMS teaching award as well as the Humanism in Medicine award in 2005. In line with the 2005 AAMC report on musculoskeletal education, Dr. Day continues to be an advocate for improved musculoskeletal training for all medical students at HMS and nationally.
