Elections: CDIM

Candidates

President-Elect

Nora Osman, MD

I am deeply honored to be considered for the role of CDIM President-Elect. I am a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, clerkship site director and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  I have been active in CDIM since becoming a member of the core teaching faculty at BWH. After serving two terms on the Survey and Scholarship committee, I was honored to be elected to the CDIM council. I consider these eight years of service - working, learning and co-creating scholarship with colleagues - one of the highlights of my career. I owe many of the important conceptual frameworks that guide my approach to medical education to these CDIM collaborations.

In my clinical and educational roles, I am motivated by working on teams as we strive to accomplish shared goals. This collaborative stance and the parallels between the educational and therapeutic alliances with learners and patients cannot be overemphasized. I believe we are at our best as clinicians when we use our honed educational skills – activating prior knowledge, probing for understanding, “teaching back” – with our patients, just as we are at our best as educators when we apply our clinical skills –observation, interviewing, diagnosis, and coaching – with our learners. Recognizing and leveraging this overlap of clinical and educational skills is critical to how we design educational structures, support faculty development and foster professional and personal growth in our learners. I have been fortunate to find colleagues in CDIM who share this perspective.

I have primarily focused my academic career in two areas: equity in the learning environment, and mentorship. With CDIM colleagues, I have delivered workshops on equity in assessment, professionalism, and trust in mentoring at CDIM meetings. Working with the CDIM Survey and Scholarship committee, we have published manuscripts and clerkship guidelines, all under the auspices of AAIM. The field of professional development continues to evolve with new opportunities for exploration and scholarship. This year, we established a CDIM working group to examine opportunities to build on existing AAIM mentorship programs, identify gaps, and develop new programs that meet the needs of faculty at all career stages with an interest in mentoring. If elected, I would have the opportunity to bring my experience in this area to tackle these cross-council endeavors collaboratively for three more years. 

I am grateful to CDIM and AAIM for providing me with opportunities and mentorship as I grow as a clinician-educator. It would be an honor to serve as president-elect of CDIM and to continue to collaborate with our community of educators dedicated to addressing our educational joys and challenges. Thank you for your consideration.

Councilor

Andrew Caruso, MD

My name is Andrew Caruso, and I am honored to be running to serve you on CDIM Council. I am an Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX where I have had the joy of being our Clerkship Director for ten years.

I have attended every annual CDIM meeting since 2015 and have experience with serving on the CDIM Program Planning Committee (PPC) where I served from 2018-2022 and then served one additional year as a transitional member from 2022-2023. While on committee we had the added challenge of adapting the entire conference into a virtual conference during the COVID-19 pandemic which required a good deal of flexibility. In serving on this committee, I learned a lot about what was challenging our society and felt I finished my role with an understanding of where our society would find both opportunities and challenges in the next five years. In addition to PPC, I have tried to be active in all parts of our conference and have had experience in poster/workshop review and judging, precourse design and implementation, workshop delivery, and in helping facilitate an open forum. My favorite part of the conference is the networking we get to do and is highlighted by our networking dinners that I have really cherished over the years.

My vision for contributing to council would hope to incorporate these three themes:
1) Embracing the Joy of Education - I love my job as Clerkship Director and believe that a role on council would be a great way to continue to network with our amazing group of educational leaders at AAIM / CDIM. Our roles as educators have many challenges and stressors that can make finding the fun of education harder, but I think there is a way to embrace those challenges with positivity. I would hope to help identify and broadcast best practice ideas for success in educational leadership that help to keep our members more resilient. Finding methods to build our individual and collective resiliency is vital to being ready to overcome the challenges of our roles so that we can be ready to support and mentor our students. AAIM week and the importance of CDIM to our members should not be understated, and I would hope to engage with our community in all ways available to continue to bring the joy of education to our annual conference.

2) Improving the UME to GME Transition - CDIM has been instrumental in assisting the advising process of the many complexities of the UME to GME Transition. I believe that our society has already made some excellent additions to the signaling application process and the evolving student hand off to GME that I think we can continue to fine tune and improve. I have been one of my institution’s specialty mentors for Internal Medicine and have seen the landscape of applications change dramatically over the last ten years and hope to help discover additional process improvements to best serve our UME and GME priorities and to do so in a well thought out fashion that optimizes equity and reliability. 

3) Understanding Assessment – I believe one of the strengths of our society is the shared knowledge of new educational research and practices. There have been many changes in clerkship grading, assessment and structure that are important to continue to highlight to our society. I would hope to help keep this topic as a major thread at our society meeting.

Thank you kindly for considering my candidacy.

Councilor

Danelle Cayea, MD

Being an active member of the CDIM community is one of my greatest professional joys.  As a CDIM council member I’d be enthusiastic about continuing the work of more fully integrating all UME educators into CDIM’s work and meeting and exploring expansion of faculty development opportunities within AAIM.

I have been passionate about faculty development as the cornerstone of successful educational programs and professional satisfaction.  CDIM is the professional home for many.  It offers outstanding meeting content and has grown in its faculty development offerings.  I’d like to work with Council to explore options for other types of faculty development and possible collaboration with other professional societies with a strong educator core.  My experience in leading and designing faculty development efforts at my home institution, through national societies, and internationally will inform this work as will my 2 terms on the CDIM Program Planning Committee.

Many CDIM members go on to other leadership positions, and when I became a Vice Chair, I learned firsthand the opportunities needed to gain leadership skills to serve at the Departmental and School level.  I’d love to see CDIM specifically partner with the Vice Chairs group, ASP, and APM to expand leadership development offerings for UME educators.

In addition to serving as a clerkship director for over 10 years, I currently serve as Vice Chair for Education for the Department of Medicine.  In this role I am privileged to work with a variety of general and subspecialty UME educators and can bring their perspectives to Council.  I have extensive teaching and curriculum development experience across all 4 years of medical school, from teaching in the foundational clinical skills course to co-developing and leading Hopkins’ first prep for internship course and developing and leading an integrated curricular horizontal thread.  In my current role I support subinternship directors, lead a team of education administrators, and advise all IM applicants, write all SELs and collaborate closely with residency program directors.  I have been highly active in the full spectrum of undergraduate medical education as well as a long serving clerkship director, work closely with administrators, and am active in the UME to GME transition.  This breadth of experience gives me unique skills and perspective and will help further intergrate a broad range of UME educators into CDIM.

Lastly, a bit about me.  I am a geriatrician-internist and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins.  I moved to Baltimore 19 years ago after completing residency, fellowship, and a master’s in medical education at the University of Pittsburgh.  I spend an above average amount of time thinking and learning about food and planning my next trip!  When I am not at work you’ll find me walking in the woods with my 2 Labrador retrievers.

Councilor

Christopher King, MD

I became involved in medical student education immediately after finishing residency in 2013 as a clerkship site director and over the next 12 months developed the skills necessary to take over as the clerkship director at the University of Colorado. I attended my first CDIM meeting in 2013 and I have loved the work I have been involved in with my CDIM colleagues since that time.

As an author on our newest CDIM clerkship curriculum, I helped develop the roadmap for our clerkship students. I have worked on our CDIM-NBME task force for 6 years to make the Medicine Subject Exam align with our clerkship curriculum and focus more on key internal medicine topics. I served CDIM on the Program Planning Committee from 2021 to 2024, including planning some of our “great debate” sessions such as the debate between pass-fail or tiered grading and the use of AI in clinical education. These sessions highlight the changing nature of clinical education and the impact on our students. As a councilor I will work to help us and our students navigate these rapid changes through building collaboration with other AAIM groups such as APDIM and CDIM-CA. 

Collaboration between AAIM groups will help us to work toward our goals of smoothing the UME to GME transition and promoting innovation in medical education. The changes in the reporting of standardized test scores, move to signaling in residency applications, and debate over the utility of grades highlight the changing landscape of internal medicine education and I plan to help CDIM remain the best resource for guidance on how to help students navigate these changes while supporting rigorous research into the effects of these changes. 

CDIM membership and mentorship has been critical to my success as a medical educator, and my CDIM colleagues have shaped my life and career, from awarding me the Early Career Medical Student Educator award in 2020 to showing me how to build a career doing the educational work I love.  I hope to have the opportunity to serve CDIM through election to CDIM council to help pay back what I have gained through this amazing community.

Councilor

Temple A. Ratcliffe, MD, FACP

My name is Temple Ratcliffe, and I am the Clerkship Director at the University of Texas Health Long School of Medicine in San Antonio, TX. CDIM has been my professional home since I joined the organization in 2009.

Over the years I have learned so much from my CDIM colleagues, and many of them have become close friends. I have also grown professionally through CDIM – first as a member of the CDIM Program Planning Committee and more recently as Chair of the CDIM Survey and Scholarship Committee. CDIM’s annual meeting remains my “can’t miss” conference every year. CDIM has given me so much over the years, and I hope to give back as a member of the CDIM Council next year.

As Clerkship Directors, we aim to support and to help our students grow; in turn, CDIM supports us as educational program leaders and allows us to continue this crucial mission. My focus as a councilor would be to grow our organization’s already outstanding opportunities for both old and new members. Specifically, I plan to focus on advocating for national standards addressing protected time for our vital leadership, educational, and scholar roles, developing new ways for members to collaborate and grow their  medical education scholarly interests, and contributing to vital AAIM cross-council initiatives.

During my time in the United States Air Force medical corps, I learned the phrase “good leaders grow people.” I have certainly grown thanks to tremendous CDIM leaders, and if selected as councilor, my main aim will be to help our dedicated members reach their fullest potential. Thank you for your consideration.

Councilor

Nancy Skehan, MD

I am excited to submit my candidacy for a CDIM council position and wish to offer my qualifications and vision for this position for the consideration of the voting membership. As a dedicated educator, clinician, and leader, I am inspired by the opportunity to further the Alliance's mission and represent the diverse range of voices within our community. I have been an Alliance member since 2014 and have actively contributed to CDIM programming since 2022.

Accomplishments and Current Contributions
In my role as Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Internal Medicine Clerkship at UMass Chan Medical School, I have been privileged to contribute significantly to medical education and training.

My career highlights include:

• AAIM Contributions: I am currently serving in my third year on the CDIM Program Planning Committee and leading the group responsible for planning the New Course Directors Pre-course. I also have represented CDIM in the Alliance for Clinical Education (ACE) since 2023 and recently provided CDIM's perspective at a panel discussion on Approaches to Obtaining Valuable, Fair and Equitable Assessments of Medical Students in Core Clerkships at AAMC Learn Serve Lead 2024.
• Educational Leadership: I have directed transformative curricular innovations in UMass Chan’s recent major curriculum revision, Vista, such as the creation of an immersive clerkship curriculum in Post-Acute Care. I foster collaboration and standardization across specialties in my role as chair of the UMass Chan committee that oversees the clerkship phase of training.

Vision and Goals
I have been clerkship director at UMass Chan Medical School since 2021 and as a relatively new course director, my vision for my contribution to CDIM council is to be a voice to represent the unique needs of course directors in that critical transition period. I have found the networking aspect of CDIM of tremendous value in thinking through issues in my courses, and can envision building out on the mentoring model within CDIM to include peer mentoring groups of new course directors. My hope is that by bringing forward ideas that foster growth and collaboration, we create a strong core of upcoming academic leaders.

Commitment to Representation
As a second generation Thai-American woman in a leadership position, I often reflect on who is represented in academic medicine and whether we are speaking for everyone when we make important educational decisions, and I intend to approach my work as a CDIM councilor with same care and intention. I currently teach in a public, University-based medical school in Massachusetts that has recently undergone a major curriculum overhaul wherein a new focus of Health Systems Science has been added in addition to the Clinical and Biomedical Sciences based out of a safety-net hospital that serves the second largest urban population in New England. 

Together, we can ensure that the Alliance continues to thrive as a hub for collaboration, innovation, and inclusivity. Thank you for considering my candidacy.

• President-Elect
• Councilor (Caruso)
• Councilor (Cayea)
• Councilor (King)
• Councilor (Ratcliffe)
• Councilor (Skehan)