Psychiatrist Wins Prestigious Medical Education Award

Each February, for three years now, several resident program directors have received Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awards from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

The awards, which are given to residency program directors whom the ACGME considers outstanding, are named after Parker J. Palmer, Ph.D., who developed a program to renew the spirit of teachers and who wrote the book The Courage to Teach.

One of the 10 program directors to be honored in February was a psychiatrist—Carlyle Chan, M.D., professor and vice chair for education and informatics in the department of psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of excellent, dedicated program directors in all specialties across the country,” Chan told Psychiatric News. “I am honored to have been one of the 10 selected this year and am grateful for the recognition for doing the job I love to do.”

“I actually gave Dr. Chan his role of director of residency education and recommended all of his promotions and helped mentor his career,” Harry Prosen, M.D., former chair of psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and one of the individuals who nominated him for the award, told Psychiatric News. “I was always struck with his enthusiasm, energy, organizational skills, and his demanding that his ideas have a fair hearing.”

“Carl is extraordinary for his creativity in, commitment to, and energy for innovative education,” Laura Roberts, M.D., chair of psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin and one of the persons who nominated Chan for the award, added. For instance, she noted, he started teaching evidence-based psychiatry years before it became known by that name. He also helped initiate and develop the Psychotherapy Center, one of only a few such psychotherapy training clinics in the country. In addition, Chan was one of the first program directors nationwide to computerize residency administration by introducing the use of personal digital assistants to record resident patient logs and provide a mobile psychopharmacology database to aid in patient care and safety, Roberts said.

When Chan was at the Parker Palmer Awards ceremony in February, did he sense that he and the other nine awardees share some of the same techniques for teaching medical residents? “I got the impression that we all share the same dedication and enthusiasm for teaching, but not necessarily the same techniques,” he told Psychiatric News. “There are many ways to teach, for instance, lecturing, small-group discussions, individual supervision, among others. However, the teacher must in some way connect with his or her student. This is, in part, what Parker Palmer writes about in his book The Courage to Teach.”

Last year, a psychiatrist received a Parker Palmer Award as well. He was Gene Beresin, M.D., director of child and adolescent psychiatry residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital.

More information about the Parker J. Palmer award is posted online at www.acgme.org/palmerAward/palmerMem.asp. ▪