Medical Education Fellowship

The UVM Health Network Medical Education Fellowship aims to prepare emergency medicine faculty for productive and satisfying careers as clinician educators with advanced skills in medical education, residency administration, and education scholarship. While our one-year fellowship can be tailored to the unique interests and goals of each fellow, our program focuses specifically on the development of advanced skills in curricular design, learner assessment, education research, and program evaluation across both academic and community settings.

The Medical Education Fellowship impacts our UVM Health Network by spreading our academic mission across our rural community hospitals, teaching students and residents in various practice settings, and supporting faculty development for both academic and community practice physicians.

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Foundational Components

Our Medical Education Fellowship curriculum draws on resources both locally and nationally, and encompasses 5 broad domains:

Theories of learning and teaching methods

Administration and program evaluation

Didactic education and curricular design

Professional development

Education Research

Fellows will have the opportunity to tailor their experiences and areas of focus within each domain, such as engaging more in resident versus medical student education, seeking grant funding for education research, and participating in courses offered through ACEP, ALIEM, and CORD.

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Our Medical Education Fellow works closely with our Didactic Education Leadership Team to optimize our weekly didactic curriculum for residents and rotating students. Fellows will engage in both the behind-the-scenes preparation and the learner-facing delivery of interactive lectures, simulation scenarios, oral-boards-style Foundations cases, and challenging training exercises in austere environments. Our EM faculty group includes educators with incredible teaching skills (some of whom have been nationally recognized for teaching), and our Fellow will join this team in providing the highest quality education to our LCOM students and EM residents.

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The Larner College of Medicine Teaching Academy supports our Medical Education Fellowship by providing a community of educators that leads educational innovation and scholarship, and provides fellows with access to many resources to further their teaching skills, networking, and professional development.

Clinical Work

Fellows that join our group work clinically as ED attendings both at our academic medical center and at one of the community hospitals in our Network.

University of Vermont Medical Center, Burlington VT (UVMMC): UVM Medical Center's ED has more than 65,000 patient visits a year. It has 62 beds, with some specifically designated for trauma and major resuscitation. It has a separate pediatric ED affiliated with the University of Vermont Children's Hospital, and currently one evening shift per day is staffed by our specialty-trained PEM faculty. Shifts at UVMMC will involve the supervision of EM residents, off-service residents, medical students, and physician assistants.

Community hospitals in the University of Vermont Health Network where fellows may work include:

Central Vermont Medical Center, Berlin, VT (CVMC)

Porter Medical Center, Middlebury, VT (PMC)

Elizabethtown Community Hospital, Elizabethtown, NY (ECH)

Champlain Valley Physicians' Hospital, Plattsburgh, NY (CVPH)

Moonlighting/ additional pay opportunities: Fellows will have the opportunity to take on additional shifts at UVMMC and Network community hospitals during time periods that there is no conflict with fellowship responsibilities.

 

 



 

Rich Bounds, MD, FACEP, FAAEM
Fellowship Director

Rich at grad

Rich Bounds came to Vermont as the inaugural Program Director for the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at UVMMC in 2017. With prior experience launching the Medical Education Fellowship at Christiana Care, Rich recognized the impact and value of such a program, and he prioritized the approval of Med Ed as the first post-graduate fellowship for Emergency Medicine in 2019, welcoming Tabitha Ford to our team. Rich is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Larner College of Medicine and a Master Teacher for the LCOM Teaching Academy. His areas of research focus on feedback delivery and receptivity, curricular innovations, and gender equity in student evaluations.

John Priester, MD
Priester grad action

A graduate of our second residency class, John Priester was an absolute favorite of both students and colleagues in the ED. He decided to stay on as our Medical Education Fellow for 2023-24, to contribute to our clinical and academic missions at UVMMC and CVPH. 

Tabitha Ford, MD

Tabitha

Our inaugural 2020-2021 Med Ed Fellow, Tabitha Ford, came to us after serving as Chief Resident at Utah's EM program. She helped us to develop our first fellowship program and exceeded all expectations, and decided to continue with our group as a member of our leadership team. Tabitha now serves as our Associate Program Director and our Director of Didactic Education.