NBME ASSESSMENT ALLIANCE

Laurie C. Caines is an internist and Associate Professor of Medicine at UConn Health. She received her medical degree from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine (UConn SOM) in 2006 and completed her internal medicine residency training and chief residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2010. She has been practicing primary care at UConn Health since 2010.

Over the last decade, Dr. Caines has had a number of roles in undergraduate medical education at UConn SOM. She was section leader for the Principles of Clinical Medicine course from 2010 to 2016. She was involved in the major curricular change that took place in 2016 and served as course director for Delivery of Clinical Care A as well as co-director of Clinically Oriented Essentials (COrE).

From 2019 to 2022, she served as the Director of Academic Educational Affairs as the dean’s liaison to the Academic Advancement Committee. Dr. Caines is now the Director of Clinical Skills. She has received a number of Awards including the Charles N. Loeser Award for excellence in teaching and the Gold Humanism Award.

Dr. Caines is currently the treasurer for the Directors of Clinical Skills Education and serves on the Executive Council and Program Planning Committee for this organization. 

Analia Castiglioni is an academic general internist and clinician-educator at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine (UCFCOM). She practices primary care at the Orlando VA Medical Center.

She received her medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania and completed a residency in internal medicine followed by a two-year clinician-educator fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Castiglioni joined UCFCOM in 2012 and has held several leadership roles instrumental in the development of UCFCOM undergraduate and graduate medical education programs. She is currently the Assistant Dean for Clinical Skills and Simulation, the medical director for the Clinical Skills and Simulation Center, and a professor in the Internal Medicine Department.

She has extensive experience in medical education, performance-based assessment and OSCEs. She has earned national and international recognition for expertise in the field, innovative curriculum, and medical education scholarship and funding.

David Gordon is an Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine. He also serves as the medical director for the Clinical Skills Lab for the Duke School of Medicine, providing oversight of the end of second-year Objective Structured Clinical Exam.

Dr. Gordon completed his MD at Harvard Medical School followed by his emergency medicine residency training at the University of Cincinnati. He has been a clinician-educator at Duke University since 2005.

His interests lie in the instruction and assessment of clinical reasoning, the remediation of difficulties in clinical reasoning, and the prevention of diagnostic errors. He has conducted research and published on how clinical reasoning is defined and assessed across the health professions, as well as on recommendations for developing and detailing an assessment of clinical reasoning.

Khadeja Johnson is a Professor of Internal Medicine and Medical Education at Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) and Assistant Dean, Undergraduate Medical Education for Clinical Skills. She completed her medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2005 and her residency in internal medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine in 2008. She then stayed on as faculty.

Dr. Khadeja serves in teaching roles to residents as well as pre-clinical and clinical medical students. She co-developed curriculum for the Clinical Scholar Program for third-year medical students on their internal medicine rotation, developed the curriculum for the Neurological Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) Program for third-year medical students, and developed the OSCE Program for the Internal Medicine Residency Program. She is the course director for Fundamentals of Medicine 2 and co-course director of Connections: Interprofessional Education at MSM.

Matthew Kelleher is a board-certified internist and pediatrician, and an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He works clinically as a hospitalist and his academic responsibilities include associate program director for the Internal Medicine Residency Program, as well as co-director of the M1 and M2 Clinical Skills Course and the Assessment of Core EPAs for the College of Medicine.

Dr. Kelleher received his medical degree from the University of Louisville where he was awarded Alpha Omega Alpha honors and elected into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. He completed his Internal Medicine and Pediatric Residency in 2014 and his chief residency in 2015. He then completed a master’s degree in medical education in 2017, focusing on resident assessment and entrustment decision making.

He has won multiple Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching & Leadership since joining the faculty at the University of Cincinnati, and this past academic year (2021–2022) he completed an Education Research Scholars Program working to implement a competency-based medical education pathway for medical students. His academic interests include assessment of clinical competency, teaching clinical reasoning, coaching and point-of-care ultrasound.

He is married to Emily Kelleher, a pediatrician in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they have two daughters ages 2 and 6.

Debra Klamen is the Senior Associate Dean for Education and Curriculum, and professor and chair of the Department of Medical Education at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Illinois.

Dr. Klamen received her medical degree at the University of Chicago and completed a psychiatry residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She completed a master’s degree in health professions education at UIC in 1998. She has held her position at Southern Illinois University since 2004.

Her research interests lie in clinical performance assessment as well as curriculum design and innovation. An example includes the development of assessment methodology to evaluate clinical reasoning of students during high-stakes clinical performance assessments. Another example was the development and implementation of a qualitatively different third-year clerkship.

Kristen Mitchell is an associate clinical professor at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. She graduated from the Maine-Dartmouth Family medicine residency program in 2010 and is board certified in Family Medicine. 

Dr. Mitchell currently leads the clinical skills course for the first-year medical students while also teaching across the curriculum in other courses of the first and second year. Her interests are developing formative and summative OSCE experiences, teaching clinical skills and clinical reasoning across the 4 years of medical school education, and humanism in medicine. Part of her current practice includes precepting medical students during their core or elective rotations.

Candace Pau is a board-certified family medicine physician with experience practicing in emergency medicine/urgent care and hospital-based medicine settings. She received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her residency training at the Kaiser Permanente Napa-Solano Family Medicine Residency Program.

Dr. Pau is the founding Faculty Director of Simulation at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, where she is responsible for the development and implementation of a robust, innovative simulation-based curriculum, encompassing activities for both instruction and assessment at the undergraduate medical education level.

She has extensive direct teaching and curricular design experience, including the use of flipped classroom, experiential learning, and game-based methodologies. She has a strong interest in competency-based assessment, particularly with respect to skills related to equity, inclusion, and diversity as well as technology and digital health care.

Vishal Poddar is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine and Sleep. He serves as Clerkship Director for Internal Medicine at Howard University College of Medicine (HUCM). He is immediate past president of Howard University Hospital's (HUH) medical staff and previously served as chair of the credentials committee from 2019 to 2020.

Dr. Poddar graduated from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Jamaica in 1993. He moved to Barbados in 1996, where he completed his first internal medicine residency, served as chief resident, then became a Barbados Registry of Strokes (BROS) research fellow before taking the faculty and program director role between 2003 and 2006.

He moved to the United States in 2006 and completed his residency training in internal medicine in 2009 at HUH. He served as assistant chief resident during residency and received a pulmonary fellowship at HUH from 2010 to 2012, while also serving as president of the house staff association from 2011 to 2012. After completing his critical care fellowship at the University of Maryland in 2013, Dr. Poddar joined the Department of Medicine faculty of HUCM.

He is involved in numerous HUH and HUCM committees and is board-certified in internal medicine, pulmonary and critical care. He has a particular interest in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and has received numerous awards for his teaching and leadership in the Caribbean at HUH and HUCM.

Jan Veesart is a clinician-educator and Assistant Dean for Clinical Education at the University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Medicine. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and is a board-certified emergency medicine physician providing clinical care in the only Level 1 Trauma Center in New Mexico.

Dr. Veesart is extensively involved in educational activities at the UNM’s School of Medicine, the Physician Assistant Program and the Emergency Medicine Residency. Her primary motivation is to prepare health care learners to practice good medicine in an effective and compassionate manner. She believes learning is easiest when theoretical principles and clinical reasoning are clearly tied to clinical applications. She teaches a variety of learners during emergency department clinical shifts, presents numerous didactic sessions related to emergency care and dedicates a significant portion of her non-clinical time to facilitating small groups in the doctoring and clinical reasoning courses within the medical school curriculum.

As a UNM School of Medicine Professional Development Coach, she strives to improve the communication skills of attending faculty, residents, advanced practice providers, nurses and medical staff to enhance the overall quality and delivery of medical care to diverse, underserved patient populations.

Past member Sharon Dowell is an Associate Professor of Medicine, attending rheumatologist and the course director for the Introduction to Clinical Medicine Program at Howard University College of Medicine. 

She received her master’s in health professions education from MGH Institute of Health Professions and completed her medical training at the University of The West Indies. She is board certified in internal medicine and rheumatology.

Dr. Dowell is actively engaged in teaching medical students, internal medicine residents, and rheumatology fellows with special interests in improving clinical reasoning, diversity in the medical workforce, and exploring the cultural aspects of interprofessional education. She is an advocate for patient education with research work that centers around increasing patient self-efficacy and health literacy, as well as improving access to care.