BIDMC honors its teachers

Many of BIDMC's top teachers were honored recently when more than 120 awards were distributed to faculty, residents and fellows in a celebratory event that kicked off Education Week. The annual salute to great teachers combines awards from Harvard Medical School and those from various departments here at BIDMC.

"I think we are increasingly leading with respect to the student awards at HMS," Richard Schwartzstein, MD, BIDMC's Vice President for Education, said after the ceremony. "This shows there's a greater acknowledgement of the role of BIDMC faculty, not only in the third year of clinical teaching, but in the first two years of basic and clinical sciences."

This year's HMS Awards included eight Resident and Fellow Awards and 21 Excellence in Tutoring Awards. In addition, Alexander Carbo, MD, Hospitalist, received the HMS Class of 2011 Best Clinical Instructor at BIDMC Award, and John Mitchell, MD, Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, won the prestigious S. Robert Stone Award for Excellence in Teaching at BIDMC.

During the ceremony in the Carl J. Shapiro Clinical Center lobby, Schwartzstein and BIDMC Board of Directors Chair Stephen Kay congratulated the awardees with a lapel pin representing the teaching award to be worn on the clinician's white coat.

Radiology resident Mai-Lan Ho, MD, shared the department's Excellence in Teaching Medical Students award with her colleague James Knutson, MD.

"I'm very honored to receive the teaching award because I think that medical education is one of the most important parts of the medical community," said Ho. "Being able to give back is important. When I was a medical student I learned the most from residents and people who are practicing as clinicians. To be able to do that now for people in training is very valuable to me."

Cardiologist David O'Halloran, MD, received the Department of Medicine's Hermann L. Blumgart Teaching Award, given annually to a faculty member who has contributed the most to both housestaff education and professional development.

"One works hard and tries to teach at every opportunity and it was nice to have that acknowledgement," said O'Halloran. "It's our duty to help create physicians who are going to be exemplary both in terms of looking after their patients and as leaders in their fields going forward. It was nice to be chosen for this award, but there are many other people who deserve it."

Part of O'Halloran's teaching style requires that he constantly remind himself of what it was like not to know something. "When you remember what it was like not to know something, and how you learned it, then you can communicate it much better," he said.

The first year of the new BIDMC Academy of Medical Educators was celebrated as a tangible manifestation of the medical center's commitment to education. The mission of the BIDMC Academy is to foster and enhance the development of physicians and scientists as educators throughout the BIDMC community.

"As Director of the HMS Academy, I encouraged all of the hospitals to establish a local hospital-based academy," said Schwartzstein. "What was beautiful about setting up the local academy at BIDMC was not just to open it up to faculty, but to residents and fellows so that we're reaching down and encouraging them to work on their skills as they play an important role with our students. And then the best of them we hope to keep here and bring onto our faculty."