The Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship in the Clinical Transaction: Reinvigorating The Patient-Physician Relationship

The 2025-2027 Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship application cycle is now open. Applications are open until Friday, December 20, 2024. 

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Click here to read a recent Q&A Blog Post with the 2016 Barondess Award Winner, Brian Garibaldi, MD, MEHP, FACP, FRCP (E)

Click here to see what past recipients of The Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship had to say about the impact of the Fellowship on their careers.

Introduction

Background

The clinical transaction consists of three core skills that impact the patient-physician relationship: obtaining a comprehensive and accurate clinical history; performing a thorough and accurate physical examination; and engaging in a rigorous process of clinical reasoning from the data acquired through these techniques. During recent decades, there has been an erosion of the transmission to medical students, residents, and fellows of these critically important skills. There commonly are deficits in the ability of medical students, residents, and fellows to communicate with patients, conduct the physical examination, and apply clinical reasoning. Importantly, this has occurred in the face of major changes in clinical practice, driven by the aging of the population and an increased burden of chronic diseases. The complexity of patients requires well-developed clinical skills, substantial clinical sophistication, and appropriate use of technology. There is a need to energize medical education and post-graduate training in these basic clinical skills. While the importance of the clinical transaction has long been recognized in medical education, there remains a need to innovate and strengthen teaching of these critically important capacities. It also is widely recognized that physicians need training in the assessment of the social and environmental determinants of health, if they are to identify the root causes of health.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in challenges to both patient care and medical education. Adaptations to the pandemic, including remote medical care through telehealth and telephonic health and remote learning through webinars and virtual conferences, have resulted in both new opportunities and challenges for medical education and post-graduate training in these basic skills. The pandemic also increased the recognition of the need for medical education and post-graduate training to promote equitable health care, including access, utilization, quality, and outcomes, for all.

Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship

To honor the visionary role of Jeremiah A. Barondess, MD in medical education, and to recognize his teaching of clinical skills at the bedside to generations of medical students and residents, the New York Academy of Medicine established The Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship in the Clinical Transaction. The Fellowship will support one fellow with special interest and expertise in medical education related to the elements of the clinical transaction in 2025-2027. The fellow will develop, implement, and evaluate an innovative approach to educating medical students, residents, and/or fellows in elements of the clinical transaction. The Fellowship will also promote supportive institutional structures and processes, with a specific focus on building successful educational experiences related to the elements of the clinical transaction. Examples of responsive applications, with the names, institutions, and project titles of prior awardees, are listed at the end of this announcement.

The Barondess Fellowship is consistent with the need for improvement in clinical care competencies among internists, included in the ACGME Internal Medicine Milestones.  The Barondess Fellowship is intended to support systematic efforts to develop internists who, by the end of their education and training, have achieved the aspirational goals for internists related to the clinical transaction.

Fellowship Goals

The goals of the Fellowship are to enhance the quality of the clinical care through innovative and rigorous educational experiences related to the elements of the clinical transaction, to develop evidence of the power of the well-conducted clinical transaction, and to improve the patient experience in clinical care by emphasizing high clinical and technical competence of these elements as well as empathy and compassion. The Fellowship funding is intended to encourage departments of medicine to provide .20 FTE of protected time for a single recipient to address these goals within their institution.

Eligibility

Applications are invited from a medical school, department of medicine, and medical school-affiliated teaching hospitals with an approved internal medicine residency program in the United States. Candidates should have exemplary clinical skills and a commitment to innovative teaching and training focused on the development of excellence in the fundamental elements of clinical care that impact the patient-physician relationship. The Fellowship is for early-career (less than or equal to five years) faculty members with a regular university/faculty appointment (e.g., instructors and assistant professors), with key responsibilities for developing, implementing, directing, and teaching in a robust, innovative clinical education and training program.  Faculty members based at a medical school-affiliated Veterans Administration Hospital may apply.  Clinical fellows or senior residents in their last year of the program may apply, but must have a junior faculty position/university appointment at the start of the Fellowship funding period on July 1, 2025.

Note: An institution that was awarded a Barondess Fellowship in 2024-2026 is not eligible for a Barondess Fellowship in 2025-2027. No more than one candidate per institution per application cycle is permitted to apply for the Fellowship.

Application Submission and Review

The applications will be submitted online, with a deadline to be determined. The Fellowship Committee will review all applications and select the awardee for 2025-2027. Applicants are asked to provide a personal statement that addresses the following questions: 1) Why do I want the Barondess Fellowship? and 2) What would the Fellowship mean to me? They are also asked to address how the Fellowship will have a lasting impact on the institution's internal medicine program. In addition to a primary focus on the fundamental clinical skills, candidates may wish to include consideration of the impacts on educational and training programs of new factors in the clinical environment, such as the increase in remote access to care through telehealth and the use of electronic communication between doctor and patient.

The award will be $50,000 ($25,000 per year for two years). The Fellowship requires an institutional commitment of .20 FTE for the awardee, but the Fellowship recognizes that the available funding will not fully support the awardees required time and effort (.20 FTE). The funds from the award can only be used for the awardee's FTE. Progress Reports will be required at the end of Years 1 and 2.

Note: Cover letters will not be considered for review by the Selection Committee.

The application includes sections a) & b) to be completed by the candidate; c) the candidate's department chair; and d) a letter of support from the internal medicine program director. Completion of all sections is required.

For additional Information, contact: fellows@nyam.org Office of Fellowship and Research Endowments.

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RECIPIENTS

2023-2025
Daniel Sartori, MD
Developing a virtual standardized patient program to teach and assess trainees’ clinical skills in the telemedicine era
Research conducted at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn

Jacqueline Birnbaum, MD
Development and implementation of a curriculum on inter-visit care in the ambulatory setting
Research conducted at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

2022 - 2024
Danielle L. Clark,  MD
Utilizing quality improvement methods to improve patient-centered bedside rounds in the COVID-19 era
Research Conducted at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center

2021-2023
Angela Orozco, MD
Longitudinal curriculum that improves residents' clinical care provided to individuals with Limited English Proficiency (LEP)
Research conducted at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

2020-2022
Justin Berk, MD, MPH, MBA
Development and testing of podcasting programming as an innovative medium for knowledge dissemination to medical students and trainees
Research conducted at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University

2019-2021
Chelsea Hook Chang, MD
Development of an innovative curriculum for the Barondess Elective-Advanced Clinical Reasoning
Research conducted at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine

2018 – 2020 
Bethany Brisbin Lockwood, MD
An innovative program with patient- centered aims related to the clinical transaction that focuses on interpersonal skills to impact patient and physician outcomes
Research conducted at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

2017 - 2019
Reza Sedighi Manesh, MD
Examining the use of the Human Diagnosis Project ( Human Dx) as a scalable and objective measure of clinical reasoning
Research conducted at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 

2016 - 2018
Brian Garibaldi, MD
Improving Cardiopulmonary Physical Examination Skills
Research conducted at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine