Emke, Friedman named Loeb Teaching Fellows

Amanda R. Emke, MD, and Michael Friedman, MD, have been named the 2015-2017 Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Teaching Fellows at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Emke

The fellowship program was established in 2004 to advance clinical education. It was initiated with a gift from Carol and Jerome Loeb and also is supported by The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The program provides fellows the opportunity to implement ideas that augment the education of medical students and residents.

“We so appreciate that Mr. and Mrs. Loeb, several years ago, made such a meaningful commitment to the School of Medicine and to medical education overall,” said Alison J. Whelan, MD, senior associate dean for education. “Carol Loeb generously and thoughtfully has carried on what she and her late husband, Jerome, initiated. This gives physicians the opportunity to launch innovative projects that benefit patient care and teaching and advance health. It’s a very valuable, forward-thinking program.”

Friedman

Applicants are chosen on the strength of their record of excellent patient care and clinical teaching, and proposals submitted outlining a program to fulfill unmet teaching and clinical needs. Those who apply are expected to demonstrate innovative methods and project sustainability. The proposals are reviewed by a selection committee chaired by Whelan.

Emke, an assistant professor of pediatrics and an associate fellowship director in pediatric critical care, has focused previous research on team-based learning and a range of assessment tools among students and fellows. Emke is pursuing a master’s degree in health professions education at the University of Illinois-Chicago with an emphasis on assessment systems. She also serves as the coursemaster for the second-year preclinical pediatrics course.

Throughout the two-year fellowship, Emke will work to develop and implement a paired self- and peer-evaluation program. Students will be assessed in a longitudinal fashion throughout their medical school careers, with a greater focus on their first two years. Emke believes the approach will help better identify students at risk for professionalism concerns and provide remediation.

“Professional development is a critical part of physician training, but there is a lack of proven assessment tools,” Whelan said. “Not only will Dr. Emke’s project develop better assessment tools for professionalism that will be valuable to the entire medical education community, this project will help us identify and help students who may have gaps in their professional behavior. Addressing such gaps will help them more ably become professional physicians.”

Friedman, an assistant professor of radiology, serves as the radiology coursemaster of the first year anatomy lab and course director of the clinical radiology elective. His interests primarily involve medical student education, with clinical focuses including musculoskeletal ultrasound, emergency imaging and medical diagnostic coding.

With his fellowship, he plans to establish an integrated radiology curriculum focused on the preclinical and clinical years to better prepare students as they transition into their roles as image ordering and interpreting physicians. The motivation behind the program is based on the premise that all physicians must have a strong understanding of the different diagnostic imaging modalities available in patient care and the strengths and limitations of each technique.

“Our students enter every field of medicine, and as Dr. Friedman’s project highlights, every physician in every field needs to understand radiology,” Whelan said. “This project will impact all of our students and make them more effective at using radiologic imaging in patient care.”

Among his fellowship goals, Friedman and his colleagues plan to create an interactive virtual workstation to allow students to interpret imaging studies in a way that closely mirrors the clinical practice of radiology. The goal is to transition students in the clinical radiology rotation away from a traditional observational role and into active participants. The interactive workstation will include a variety of case studies.


Washington University School of Medicine’s 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
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