The Bedside Medicine Scholars Program
The Society of Bedside Medicine, in partnership with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Northwestern University Center for Bedside Medicine, is excited to continue its Bedside Medicine Scholars Program! SBM scholars join a community of talented clinician-educators and researchers who recognize the value of the bedside encounter in improving diagnostic accuracy and overall patient care. The program has selected 2 scholars each year since 2021. This year, the Center for Bedside Medicine at Northwestern University will also fund a third scholar based at Northwestern University.
Scholars Program Description
The one-year scholars program provides a $35,000 stipend (plus an additional $5000 for travel) to support a project at the scholar’s home institution that promotes diagnostic excellence and the reduction of diagnostic error. It is expected that the majority of the budget will be used to support protected time for the scholar. Projects can be based in either the outpatient or inpatient setting. Priority project areas include:
● History Taking and Communication
● Physical Examination
● Clinical Reasoning
● Shared-decision Making
● Technology at the Bedside (including point-of-care technology, artificial intelligence and telemedicine)
At least one aspect of the project should address issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice as they apply to the bedside clinical encounter and diagnostic excellence.
Eligible candidates include junior faculty (within 5 years of their residency or fellowship training) or fellows in an ACGME-accredited academic program based in the US. Applicants must have an MD, DO, MBBS or equivalent. Candidates should identify a mentor at their local institution but will also receive direct mentorship from the Society of Bedside Medicine. The third Center of Bedside Medicine-funded scholar must be based at a program affiliated with Northwestern University.
In addition to executing a specific project, scholars will participate in SBM-sponsored activities designed to foster a community of individuals dedicated to bedside medicine and diagnostic accuracy. Scholars will present their work at the annual meeting of the Society of Bedside Medicine and provide quarterly updates to the Society board.
Letters of Intent for the 2025-2026 Scholars Program
Applicants should submit a letter of intent (maximum 500 words) briefly outlining their prior experience and interest in bedside medicine and describing their project proposal to info@bedsidemedicine.org (subject line “Bedside Scholar”) by December 18, 2024.
Letters of intent will be judged by the applicant’s demonstrated interest and commitment to bedside medicine and the quality of the project. A subset of applicants will be asked to submit a full application due on March 15, 2025. The new scholars will be announced in April 2025 with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2025. Applicants from institutions who have received SBM bedside scholars awards in the prior application cycle (2024-2025) are not eligible to apply in this cycle (see below for the 2024-2025 SBM scholars and their home institutions). The final three scholars will be selected from different institutions (i.e. there cannot be two scholars from the same institution in a given year).
Full Proposals (by invitation only)
Candidates invited to submit a full proposal will be asked to provide the following:
● Curriculum Vitae
● Letter of support from a local institutional project mentor
● Letter of support from the Division or Department Chair to protect time for the project
● Personal Statement (500-word maximum) – Please describe your current work related to the bedside clinical encounter, diagnostic excellence, and reasons for applying.
● Project Description (1500-word maximum) – Please provide a description of your project including goals, objectives, methods, target audience, and program evaluation plan. At least one aspect of the proposal should address issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice as they relate to the bedside clinical encounter and diagnostic excellence. Be sure to describe how the project will promote diagnostic excellence beyond the completion of a manuscript or poster to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal or venue.
● Budget (1 page maximum) – Please provide a brief budget and justification for the 12-month project period for no greater than $35,000. Indirect costs will not be supported. It is expected that the majority of the budget will be used to support protected time for the scholar. An additional $5000 will be available for travel related to scholar activities. Please consult with your finance department to make sure that your institution will be able to accept these conditions prior to submitting the full application.
● Budget - Please indicate if you are applying to another diagnostic excellence program funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (see below).
Other Diagnostic Excellence Fellowships Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Individuals who submit an application for the SBM fellowship will be asked to indicate if they are applying for another diagnostic excellence fellowship that is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Individuals may apply to multiple GBMF fellowships in the same application cycle but will only be able to receive a single fellowship during that cycle. To learn more about other GBMF fellowships, please click here.
Bedside Medicine Scholars 2021-2023
Anderson Marshall, MD (University of Alabama at Birmingham) was born and raised in Central Texas, and completed his undergraduate and medical school at Texas A&M University. He followed in my father’s footsteps pursuing a med-peds residency, and was fortunate to match at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Through residency he found his passion for inpatient care, quality improvement, and medical education with a focus on point-of-care-ultrasound (POCUS). He serves as the Chief Medical Resident of Quality and Safety at the Birmingham VA Hospital for the 2021-2022 academic year, and will continue at UAB as academic faculty at the VA and Children’s Hospitals. Outside of the hospital, hes love cooking (favorite cook book- The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt), hiking, reading (current favorite author- Nathan Lowell), keeping up with college sports, and failing miserably at training his two dogs.
With support from the Bedside Medicine Scholars Program, Anderson is created and implemented a POCUS curriculum as part of undergraduate medical education for students on their acting-internship. His hope is that with early education in POCUS, we can equip young trainees with another diagnostic skill to serve them at the bedside during their residency and throughout their careers.
Megha Shankar, MD (UC San Diego) is an internal medicine primary care physician, educator, and researcher. Her clinical and academic work focuses on promoting reproductive health equity. Her Society of Bedside Medicine project involved the development, implementation, and evaluation of a reproductive justice workshop based off of the Presence 5 framework for humanism and anti-racism in medicine. She completed her medical education at the University of Illinois, internal medicine residency at the University of Washington, and health services research fellowship at Stanford University/Palo Alto VA.
Justin Choi, MD, MSc (Weill Cornell Medical College) is an academic hospitalist and Assistant Professor of Medicine. He was awarded a CTSC KL2 Career Development Award to study diagnosis of urinary tract infections among hospitalized older adults, and was selected to the Fellowship in Diagnostic Excellence by the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine to study team-based diagnosis. His research focuses on diagnostic excellence, team dynamics, and medical decision making for hospitalized patients.
His research project entitled “Error recovery on the wards: focused ethnography of handoffs in new patients admitted overnight in a teaching hospital” evaluated how ward teams generate, identify, and correct diagnostic errors related to bedside medicine. He used a socio-cognitive approach to understand the influence of team dynamics, team-patient interactions, and racial/ethnic diversity on the bedside diagnostic process and performance.
Dr. Prathit Kulkarni is Assistant Chief of Medicine at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of Infectious Diseases at Baylor College of Medicine, both in Houston, Texas. A native of Tyler, Texas, Dr. Kulkarni completed all of his medical training at Baylor, including medical school, residency training in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, chief medical residency in Internal Medicine, and Infectious Diseases fellowship. Prior to completing fellowship training, Dr. Kulkarni served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at the U.S. CDC. Dr. Kulkarni's academic interests span COVID-19, medical education, diagnostic reasoning, and clinical operations. The COVID-19 pandemic also spurred Dr. Kulkarni's interest in telemedicine and telehealth.
His project attempts to understand and optimize the process of telediagnosis in the evaluation of acute medical problems via telehealth modalities. Electronic health records of telehealth encounters will be systematically evaluated to catalog telediagnostic learning opportunities, understand inequities in the delivery of telehealth and accuracy of telediagnosis, and disseminate findings to optimize the delivery of equitable and high-quality telemedicine.
Bedside Medicine Scholars 2023-2024
Shub Agrawal, MD MBA (Emory University) is an internal medicine clinician educator. Originally from Athens, Georgia she completed her medical school at the Medical College of Georgia, residency at the J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency at Emory University, and chief residency at Grady Memorial Hospital. Her interests include applying evidence-based learning science in graduate medical education curricula development and integrating principles of health equity into medical education.
Her project seeks to develop, apply and evaluate a framework for using deliberate reflection to improve diagnostic accuracy & evaluate the impact of social determinants of health on care delivery, focusing on two critical moments for clinical reasoning – diagnostic reasoning upon admission to the hospital, and management reasoning upon discharge from the hospital.
Emily Murphy, MD (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) is an academic Med-Peds hospitalist and Assistant Professor of Medicine & Pediatrics. She completed her medical education at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and her residency at the Harvard Brigham & Women’s Hospital/Boston Children’s Hospital Medicine-Pediatrics Residency. She is passionate about both undergraduate and graduate medical education with a focus on social determinants of health (SDoH).
As a Bedside Medicine Scholar, she will design, implement, and evaluate a novel curriculum to educate medical students on how to integrate SDoH into clinical reasoning. She aims to create future physicians who competently consider SDoH in their assessments to provide equitable, individualized care.
Bedside Medicine Scholars 2024-2025
Tehreem Rehman, MD, MBA, MPH is an Assistant Professor and Assistant Medical Director at The Mount Sinai Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine. She holds dual degrees in public health and business administration and has certifications from Epic Physician Builder and the American Board of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. Tehreem has served on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Technical Expert Panels on national quality measures for emergency medicine and is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians Reimbursement Committee and Health Innovation Technology Committee. She is on the editorial board of the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine and has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Annals of Emergency Medicine, Journal of Public Health Management & Practice, and the Journal of the National Medical Association.
Through support from the Bedside Medicine Scholars Program, Tehreem will develop an interdisciplinary asynchronous curriculum entitled “Clinical Pathways: Advancing Health Equity in Clinical Reasoning”. The objective is to empower trainees to identify areas of significant variation in their bedside patient care and apply quality improvement methodology to achieve evidence-based structure and equity in their clinical reasoning.
Eldon Matthia, MD (University of Florida in Gainesville) was born and raised in Germany and moved to the United States to pursue his undergraduate and medical school education in South Carolina. He completed internal medicine residency and will graduate from the cardiovascular disease fellowship at the University of Florida in Gainesville in 2025. His medical training and research have fostered a passion for graduate medical education, quality improvement targeting care pathways and health disparities, as well as point-of-care ultrasound in cardiovascular disease.
With support from the Society of Bedside Medicine Scholars Program, Eldon is developing and administering a heart failure management and focused cardiac ultrasound education curriculum for first-year internal medicine residents targeting patient health literacy and financial barriers to care. He aims to equip internists and their patients with the knowledge and skills needed to manage the increasing complexities of heart failure care.
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