John Mitchell, MD
Rabkin Fellow in Medical Education
Senior Academy Fellow, BIDMC Academy of Medical Educators
Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia, Harvard Medical School
Associate Residency Program Director, Department of Anesthesia, BIDMC
Director of PCE Simulation, BIDMC
Fellowship Project:
Designing, implementing, and evaluating a simulation curriculum for third year students
Dr. John Mitchell is Associate Residency Program Director, Director of Residency Recruitment, Chair of the Clinical Competency Committee and Liaison to the Electrophysiology Laboratory for the Department of Anesthesia at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He also serves as the BIDMC Director of PCE Simulation. Nationally, he is chair and a founding member of the Website Committee for the Society for Education in Anesthesia and chair for their 2014 annual meeting program. He is an Instructor in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Mitchell received his Bachelor's and Medical Degree at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He completed his internship, anesthesia residency, and cardiothoracic anesthesia fellowship at Duke University Medical Center. He served first as chief resident and then as chief/administrative cardiothoracic anesthesia fellow during his time there and became committed to curriculum development and teaching.
Dr. Mitchell chaired the anesthesia department curriculum committee for 4 years and oversaw major curricular changes and additions including launching their simulation program, 4 other new curricular blocks, and many other innovations. Under his tenure, resident satisfaction improved over 30%. He was selected as Departmental Teacher of the Year by residents in two consecutive years. He was recently awarded the first ever Certificate of Merit for his outstanding service and leadership of the SEA Website Committee. He also received a prestigious John Hedley Whyte research grant to pursue a project on teaching faculty to provide difficult resident feedback. This is the first time this grant has been awarded for an education research project. He is involved in numerous departmental and national level education research projects and speaks nationally on resident education issues and implementing technology in education.
For his Rabkin Fellowship project, John developed and implemented, and evaluated a simulator curriculum for third year HMS PCE students rotating at BIDMC. This included a dozen new scenarios and a complete overhaul, amplification, and unification of existing materials. He also integrated skills training, developed methods to improve student throughput and "hands on" time, and instituted quality improvement measures. Student satisfaction improved markedly, and many new ideas have been borne out of this work. He is also testing the hypothesis that simulation leads to improved knowledge acquisition, retention, and student confidence and ability to function as a team.