If the mission to recognize and reward clinical excellence were a mountain, then every year at the Miller-Coulson Academy Excellence in Patient Care Symposium, the usual speakers – including Academy Director Scott Wright, M.D.; Vice Dean and CIM Director David Hellmann, M.D.; Dean and CEO Paul Rothman, M.D.; Hospital and Health System President Ron Peterson; Miller Scholar and Vice Dean Roy Ziegelstein, M.D. – and all of the newest members of the Academy would be standing on higher ground. Because every year, there is more progress to celebrate.
This year marked the 7th Annual Symposium, and the second year that the event was held at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the request of Rothman, the Academy expanded last year to include faculty from both the downtown and Bayview campuses, with a long-term goal of rewarding clinical excellence at all Johns Hopkins medical facilities. The Academy, made possible through the generosity and dedication to clinical excellence of the Miller-Coulson Family, has evolved over the years in other important ways, as well. For example: In honor of the late Frank L. Coulson, Jr., the Academy added an annual Award for Clinical Excellence to exceptional doctors-in-training (and potential future Academy members) in all 20 Hopkins residency programs. The Academy has started a coaching program, in which master clinicians serve as mentors to help new faculty develop and improve their clinical skills. Every class of interns in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview crafts an oath, and develops an image – this year’s comes from a photo an intern snapped of the North Star – to go with it, that reminds them to be clinically excellent. And this year, for the first time, there were awards for clinically excellent Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants, introduced by Patricia Davidson, Ph.D., Dean of the School of Nursing.
This year marked the 7th Annual Symposium, and the second year that the event was held at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the request of Rothman, the Academy expanded last year to include faculty from both the downtown and Bayview campuses, with a long-term goal of rewarding clinical excellence at all Johns Hopkins medical facilities. The Academy, made possible through the generosity and dedication to clinical excellence of the Miller-Coulson Family, has evolved over the years in other important ways, as well. For example: In honor of the late Frank L. Coulson, Jr., the Academy added an annual Award for Clinical Excellence to exceptional doctors-in-training (and potential future Academy members) in all 20 Hopkins residency programs. The Academy has started a coaching program, in which master clinicians serve as mentors to help new faculty develop and improve their clinical skills. Every class of interns in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview crafts an oath, and develops an image – this year’s comes from a photo an intern snapped of the North Star – to go with it, that reminds them to be clinically excellent. And this year, for the first time, there were awards for clinically excellent Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants, introduced by Patricia Davidson, Ph.D., Dean of the School of Nursing.
“The Academy is expanding in many important ways,” says Scott Wright, M.D., Director of the Miller-Coulson Academy. One of the areas of progress that he’s most excited about: “Dean Paul Rothman has asked the Academy to work with the Promotions Committee to come up with a way for the institution to recognize clinical excellence for the purposes of promotion. We have rigorous methods that we use to decide who gets into the Academy every year,” which have been adopted by Ohio State University and other medical schools around the country to help them determine which clinicians should be promoted. But at Hopkins, like most academic medical centers, “in the past, clinical performance has not been taken into consideration in determining promotion,” Wright notes.
It is not unusual at Hopkins for an excellent, distinguished clinician, even after decades of practice and teaching, to hold the rank of assistant professor or instructor. In fact, out of the 14 outstanding Johns Hopkins physicians joining the Academy this year, the vast majority are associate professors. “I think it’s because we as an institution haven’t committed the resources to assessing clinical performance,” adds Wright, “and because we haven’t done that, we really aren’t able to consider clinical performance at the time of promotion.”
Wright is a member of the Promotions Committee for the Department of Medicine. “Each year, we look at people who spend 80 percent of their time doing clinical work, and we judge them for promotion based on what they do in the other 20 percent of their time. (We are) making decisions on their worthiness for advancement based on what they do in the minority of their time and effort.”
This is changing; Rothman and other Hopkins leaders agree with Wright’s assessment. Of the four pathways for faculty at Hopkins to get promoted, “there is a pathway in the promotions book called the ‘Clinician with Distinction Pathway,’” says Wright, “but nobody gets promoted on that pathway. The exciting news is that now the Academy is working with the Promotion Committee to reconsider that pathway and make it into a true avenue that will allow some of our best clinicians to get promoted.” The recommendation to do that came to the Dean from a committee, co-chaired by Wright with David Eisele, director of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, that was specifically geared toward “thinking about how Hopkins is going to recruit or retain the best clinicians”– a committee that didn’t exist a few years ago. “The bottom line is that the Academy is a success, and due to this success, we’re being asked to help the institution with respect to all things related to clinical excellence.”
To see more of this year’s Symposium, please go to hopkinscim.org.
The 2015 Inductees into the Miller-Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence are:
John O’Brien Clarke, Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology; Clinical Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Neurogastroenterology and Clinical Director of Johns Hopkins Bayview Gastroenterology & Hepatology.
John Fetting, Associate Professor of Oncology; he served as Associate Director for Clinical Practice for the Department of Oncology from 1998 until 2015, when he resigned to focus on his breast cancer practice and the Fetting Fund for Breast Cancer Prevention Research.
Derek Fine, Associate Professor of Medicine and Fellowship Program Director in the Division of Nephrology.
Elliot K. Fishman, Professor of Radiology, Surgery, and Oncology; Director of Diagnostic Imaging and Body CT at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Mitchell Goldstein, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics; Director of the Hopkins Child Protection Team; Director of CHAMP, a statewide system for managing child maltreatment.
Carol Ann Huff, Associate Professor of Oncology and Medicine and Director of the Multiple Myeloma Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Daniel A. Laheru, Associate Professor of Oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center; the Ian T. MacMillan Professor in Clinical Pancreatic Cancer Research; Clinical Director, Division of Gastrointestinal Oncology; Co-Director, Skip Viragh Center for Pancreas Cancer Clinical Research and Patient Care.
Julie Lange, Associate Professor of Surgery, Oncology, and Dermatology.
Linda Lee, Assistant Professor of Medicine.
Susan W. Lehmann, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences; Founding Director and Medical Director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Day Hospital; Director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic; Director of the Psychiatry Clerkship; Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry.
Kristen Nelson, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine; Director of Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care.
Richard J. Redett, Associate Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery; Director of the Cleft and Craniofacial Center, Facial Pain Paralysis Center, and Pediatric Plastic Surgery.
Daniel Sciubba, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery, Orthopedic Surgery, Oncology, and Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences.
Deborah Sellmeyer, Associate Professor of Medicine; Medical Director of the Metabolic Bone Center at Johns Hopkins Bayview.
