Jeremy Richards, MD, MA
Jeremy Richards, MD, MA
Rabkin Fellow in Medical Education
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Attending Physician, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Fellowship Project: Teaching curiosity: development of a "curiosity curriculum for third-year medical students.
Dr. Jeremy Richards is an attending physician in the Medical ICUs at BIDMC and an Instructor of Medicine at HMS. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis where he was involved in many peer- and patient-educational activities. He subsequently completed residency at Boston Medical Center. After residency, he served an additional year as a Chief Resident, during which time he led many small group teaching sessions, from residents' morning reports to medical students' teaching sessions. He then completed a fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine through the Harvard Combined Fellowship Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). During the research portion of his fellowship he focused on medical education research, including completing a parallel Academy Medical Education Research fellowship. At BIDMC he is currently the Assistant Director of the MICUs and co-chairs the CME course “Principles of Intensive Care Medicine for Non-intensive Care Specialists”.
He has tutored, led small- and medium-group sessions, and lectured in many preclinical courses at Harvard Medical School (HMS), where became the co-Director of the Respiratory Pathophysiology Course for second-year medical students in 2010. He He also serves as a teaching attending for the Medicine residents at BIDMC, is a case conference leader for third-year students at BIDMC, and is the Director of the Integration Track elective at BIDMC. He is a member of both the BIDMC and HMS Academies.
As a Rabkin Fellow, Dr. Richards led focus groups for third-year medical students at BIDMC intended to determine what components of their educational experiences best served to promote and develop their curiosity. He also interviewed faculty identified as expert educators to ascertain the techniques and strategies they felt best promoted curiosity in third-year students. Qualitative analyses of the focus group and interview recordings and transcripts yielded key themes that were used to develop a "curiosity curriculum" template. The curriculum has been implemented in the Integration Track in AY2012-2013. Acceptability, feasibility, and students' qualitative responses to the "curiosity curriculum" will be determined, and metrics of curiosity and cognitive preferences will be followed over the course of the year.