Archive for category: News You Need to Know

Dan Jamieson, MD (Pulmonary and Critical Care; Internal Medicine)

Dan Jamieson, MD (Pulmonary and Critical Care; Internal Medicine) has always called Maryland and the Washington, DC, area home – in fact he was born at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital! It’s no surprise then that after his fellowship, he ended up at MedStar Health, the largest healthcare provider in the region. Dr. Jamieson is the Program Director (PD) for the Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital (MGUH) and one of the Associate Program Directors (APD) for Internal Medicine at MGUH.

Dr. Jamieson was inspired to pursue medicine while in high school when he developed a deep fascination with science and biology. His roles as a PD and APD at MedStar Health perfectly pair Dr. Jamieson’s medical skills as a clinician with his passion for mentoring and teaching the next generation of physicians.

“Number one will always be the students, residents and fellows,” Dr. Jamieson responded when asked what he enjoys most about working in graduate medical education. “There is an intentional focus on education in everything we do at Medstar Health. From our focus on the learning environment to the way we run daily rounds. I also love working with a dedicated team of educators to address current challenges in graduate medical education.”

There are always new challenges in healthcare, and MedStar Health is continually striving to find ways to build on current practices and better care for our patients and our communities. The knowledge that leaders like Dr. Jamieson are imparting on our residents and fellows are critical to that mission.

“The pace of change in medicine in the U.S. is impressive,” Dr. Jamieson said. “I know we will continue to support innovation and education of the next generation of learners.”

Dr. Jamieson doesn’t just envision a better future for healthcare – he is putting in the hard work to create that future. As one of three inaugural GME Leadership Fellows, Dr. Jamieson is gaining new insight into what it takes to run and improve our consortium and contributing his expertise to make it happen.

Dr. Jamieson and his wife have three children and they recently added two cats into the mix. “After intense negotiations with my daughter and wife, we have settled on Lola and Findus for their names,” Dr. Jamieson joked.

Christian Woods, MD (Pulmonary and Critical Care; Infectious Diseases)

When Christian Woods, MD (Pulmonary and Critical Care; Infectious Diseases) walked into Washington Hospital Center for his internship more than 20 years ago, he only intended to stay for a few years.

“My residency turned into a Chief Residency, which turned into fellowship one to fellowship two, and now I’ve been an attending physician since 2010,” Dr. Woods recalled.

In addition to being a double board-certified physician, Dr. Woods is the Program Director for the pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship at MedStar Washington Hospital Center as well as an Associate Program Director for the internal medicine program. Dr. Woods deeply enjoys teaching and watching each resident or fellow’s individual journey.

“I learn just as much from my trainees, I think, as they learn from me,” he said. “I have a lot of pride watching them accomplish great things and become great physicians.”

Part of what makes a Program Director great, Dr. Woods believes, is having a personal investment in the success of your trainees and being willing to serve as a mentor. He experienced this first-hand as an intern when the esteemed Chair of Medicine at Washington Hospital Center at the time treated a young Dr. Woods as a respected physician, and not “just another resident.”

“I can give you the smartest doctor in the world to be your attending. But if the environment is not right, and you don’t feel comfortable and you don’t feel like you can inquire and ask questions, it’s a wasted opportunity,” Dr. Woods explained.

A lot of things have changed in the more than 20 years Dr. Woods has worked at MedStar Health, but GME and medical education has always remained a focus. “What’s unique about MedStar Health is that medical education and GME are so well regarded within our institution, and that makes it a great place to work.”

That’s why Dr. Woods is excited about the opportunity to further contribute to the success of MedStar Health GME as one of three inaugural GME Leadership Fellows. This unique fellowship is helping Dr. Woods expand his leadership capabilities while giving him new insight into what it takes to run a world-class medical education consortium.

As a student who became interested in the field of infectious disease after seeing how potent HIV medicines brought new hope to a devastating disease, and a physician who has experienced first-hand the challenges of providing evidence-based critical care in the face of a novel virus during the height of a COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Woods knows that medicine is always changing. What he sees on the horizon for medicine is an expansion of global collaboration and education to better care for patients. For example, using synchronous training to teach to residents and fellows at MedStar Health – and around the country. Or using a telehealth platform to help a physician across the globe manage a ventilator console.

When Dr. Woods is not practicing medicine or teaching residents and fellows, he enjoys spending time with family. He also turned to building complicated Lego sets during the COVID-19 pandemic to relieve stress – a hobby that he has continued alongside his two sons. Next up on his Lego list? A 9,000-piece replica of the Titanic.

It may appear that Jonathan Davis, MD (Emergency Medicine) is in perpetual motion. Dr. Davis is always investing energy into forward progress, whether working clinically in the Emergency Department (ED) at MedStar Georgetown or MedStar Washington Hospital Center, serving MedStar Health’s 1,150 resident and fellows as the Physician Chair for Graduate Medical Education (GME), or even doing yoga on a Saturday morning.

Dr. Davis also serves as the Academic Chair for Emergency Medicine, and the co-chair of the System Graduate Medical Education Committee (GMEC).

Every day at GME is different, and Dr. Davis partners with Dean Jamie Padmore and the rest of the GME Executive Team to ensure that MedStar Health is always delivering an exceptional leaning experience. Dr. Davis draws upon his clinical experience in the ED to not only successfully triage challenges but also bring together multiple specialties and departments to quickly develop effective solutions. Within the world of GME, Dr. Davis must constantly interface with GME Program Directors, teaching faculty, residents, and fellows, MedStar Health and hospital leaders, and the Georgetown University School of Medicine leadership team.

Dr. Davis entered medicine because he always loved teaching and the life sciences and viewed physicians as the consummate teacher. That’s what inspired him to get involved in medical education.

“To me, foundationally, that’s what doctors do: they teach. Whether you’re teaching your patients or teaching their families. It’s such a meaningful role in GME, to provide education to those who educate others,” Dr. Davis said.

MedStar Health provides a unique learning environment for its residents and fellows. Being a consortium that straddles two major metropolitan areas gives it a distinct advantage.

Jonathan Davis, MD (Emergency Medicine)

“MedStar Health – with 10 hospitals and over 300 sites of care – is really a microcosm of health care delivery across the United States. We have rural sites of practice and suburban and urban populations. We have primary care and quaternary care,” Dr. Davis explained. “When we are teaching and training future generations of care providers, they get to learn in a wide-ranging environment that is likely to reflect some aspect of where our residents and fellows will ultimately work in the future.”

There is no question that the national health care landscape is adapting and evolving. MedStar Health GME is changing alongside it. MedStar Health places immense value on advancing health and GME is the centerpiece of its educational portfolio. We can’t advance health without investing in medical education and research and championing the innovation of MedStar Health training programs and faculty.

“That’s why I enjoy being at MedStar Health. We’re a forward-thinking organization that’s at the cutting edge of all these changes. What better system to not only adapt and evolve to the future, but also to create the future of healthcare,” he said.

For Dr. Davis, working at MedStar Health also brings him close to his hometown. He grew up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, but moved to California for residency where he met his wife who is in fact from Gaithersburg.

“All roads, at least for me, lead back to Gaithersburg,” he joked.

If you ask Neil Weissman, MD, what he loves most about his job, he’ll tell you how much he appreciates that MedStar Health is not just “in the medicine business,” where the core goals are simply to diagnose and treat someone when they get sick, but rather we are committed to health, wellbeing, and preventing illness. That’s because as an academic health system, MedStar Health recognizes that there are many aspects of advancing health that transcend the traditional clinic setting.

“To address health, you’ve got to go beyond the four walls of a hospital. An academic health system lives at the crossroad of academia and the real world. It addresses real-life issues and determinants of health: social, racial, economic, cultural, environmental factors – all those things affect health,” he said. “We’re a true health system that connects to the community, which is an ideal place to do research and a great place to train.  It means the things we discover and learn are applicable to all those within our community.”

At MedStar Health, both research and education are core to the mission of providing high-quality health care. Dr. Weissman serves as the President of the MedStar Health Research Institute, where his responsibility is to support research within the system, and the Chief Scientific Officer of MedStar Health, which positions Dr. Weissman as an ambassador for the research being conducted at MedStar Health.

A trained cardiologist, Dr. Weissman originally decided to pursue medicine thanks to a very dynamic professor at the veterinary school where Dr. Weissman was taking a physiology course. “I wanted to go into a field where I could be a lifelong learner,” Dr. Weissman said. “Intellectual curiosity has been one of the big motivators for me.”

Dr. Weissman has been fortunate to have his career span clinical, educational, research, and administrative roles and all of these different roles were within the Georgetown University—MedStar Health system. As a researcher, Dr. Weissman was never interested in theoretical research. “What I always really loved as an investigator was to see my research put into practice. When I’m done with a research study and the results are immediately applicable for patients,” he said.

Now, he’s overseeing researchers at MedStar Health who are conducting research that has real-world impacts for communities here in the Washington/Baltimore region, and for countless others around the world. As Dr. Weissman said, “We are the future of academic medicine.”

What does that future look like exactly? Dr. Weissman is enthusiastic about the role that technology can help play in connecting medicine and clinicians on a real-time basis with patients. Technology that we’ve already integrated into our day-to-day lives, such as smart watches, could help foster a healthier future. “There’s all kind of technology out there that could passively help identify early symptoms of disease and allow us to implement early interventions. That’s where the future of medicine is, and how we’re going to become even more connected to our community,” he said.

While Dr. Weissman’s job keeps him busy, he also enjoys going on hikes with his dog Max, who joined the family as a so-called pandemic puppy, and tending to his vegetable and fruit garden.

Leon “Lee” Jones, MD

For Leon “Lee” Jones, MD, dean for medical education at Georgetown University’s School of Medicine, his commitment to medical education is personal.

“I’m not only an educator, and the Dean for medical education, but I’m also a son and a husband,” he said, pointing to the exceptional medical care that both he and his family have received at MedStar Health. “Those [physicians] are the people who are educating Georgetown students.”

At Georgetown University, Dean Jones oversees the medical education for more than 800 medical students. His job is to ensure that students are receiving the best possible education. It requires working across multiple disciples and departments and working in close partnership with MedStar Health graduate medical education (GME).

A psychiatrist by training, Dean Jones first pursued medicine because of his interest in science, his curiosity for learning, and his love of people. “I thought, how can I pull those three things together? It was medicine.”

It is no surprise then that Dean Jones cites the people at Georgetown University and MedStar Health as one of the reasons he loves being a medical educator. “Medical students, and also my faculty and colleagues, are energetic, they’re passionate, they love what they do, and they want to change the world,” he said. “I get to learn a lot from everybody… I’d have to go out of my way to avoid learning new things.”

More than 80% of medical student teaching at Georgetown University is delivered by Medstar Health GME residents and fellows and clinical training is conducted primarily at MedStar Health sites.

“There are 10 amazing hospitals and hundreds of phenomenal clinics that our students get to avail themselves of, where outstanding clinicians and outstanding teachers provide outstanding services to our communities,” Dean Jones said. “Our students benefit from a combination of great hospitals and great teaching from people who care.”

As dean, he has unique insight into the future of medicine. Figuring out how to provide everyone with great health care is top of his list, pointing to the income and health disparities present right here in Washington, DC. “My vision is that we train an interdisciplinary healthcare workforce so that can take of everyone, and everyone’s health is addressed,” he said. “I think we can do that. We’re making great progress. But we still have a lot of work to do.”

Outside of the medical school, Dean Jones is recognized more often for his large dogs, with people often stopping him to take pictures of his three dogs: two Saint Bernards and a Mastiff. The dogs, plus two cats, make for a lively household. “My husband and I treat them like our kids,” he laughed. “Our Mastiff had a knee surgery and can’t do stairs, so we bought a house that’s all one level so that he would be more comfortable.”

From canine companion to education leader, its apparent that Dean Jones cares deeply about others.