Medical Education Research Fellowship

Overview

This fellowship is designed for junior faculty seeking personalized mentorship and time to build skills in medical education research methods, teaching, leadership, and curricular development. The fellowship provides dedicated time to develop academic projects, foster collaborations, and hone a specific area of expertise within medical education.

We believe that fellowship should be a time of transformation and we have structured our fellowship in ways that our fellows have time to explore new interests. We provide intensive mentorship and a safe community of practice to support our fellows and believe strongly that each fellow should be able to define and explore their own area of interest and expertise.

Our fellowship alumni have been successful in a variety of roles after graduation:

• Joshua Jauregui (Google Scholar)
• Annie Chipman (PubMed)
• Alisha Brown (Google Scholar)
• Jeff Riddell (Google Scholar)
• Laura Welsh (Google Scholar)
• Bjorn Watsjold (Google Scholar)
• Ashley Amick (Google Scholar)
• Caitlin Schrepel (Google Scholar)

Core Components of the Fellowship

Weekly Mentorship Meetings

Our fellowship team meets weekly to read and critically appraise the health professions education literature, including both canonical and current literature. This curriculum is deliberately flexible, allowing each fellow to explore and develop a professional niche. Topics are chosen by fellows and faculty to provide both a broad selection of foundational knowledge, structured exposure to conceptual frameworks that have been applied to medical education scholarship, and to support fellows’ individual interests and research projects. Fellows lead work-in-progress sessions to refine innovative curricular or research projects through peer and mentor feedback. 

Teaching & Leadership Skills Development

Fellows will participate in the University of Washington Teaching Scholars Program during their first year. This interdisciplinary and inter-professional community meets weekly for 3 hours, with sessions focused on best practices and core principles of health professions education. Fellows complete a mentored scholarly project and receive a certificate recognizing their completion of this course. Additionally, fellows will gain exposure to a multitude of curricular and faculty development initiatives through the fellowship’s affiliation with UW's Center for Leadership & Innovation in Medical Education (CLIME). 

Fellows refine their teaching skills through regular participation in UW’s Emergency Medicine Residency and Student Programs curriculum. There are also numerous opportunities to teach in the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education communities.

Medical Education Research Skills Development

In addition to the weekly mentorship meetings, the fellowship team also engages in mentored peer review to develop skills engaging with pre-publication research. We are very proud of our fellows’ diverse scholarly interests and include several representative publications below that are representative of the work the fellows have engaged with during fellowship.

Fellows also have the opportunity to refine their methodological skills through the AAMC’s Medical Education Research Certificate (MERC) program on-site at UW. To foster collaboration and regular mentorship for project development, fellows will attend monthly “work-in-progress” sessions sponsored by CLIME designed to support the activities of faculty completing the year-long MERC program.

Clinical Role

Medical education fellows will work as attending physicians for six shifts per month in the Emergency Department at Harborview Medical Center (HMC). HMC is a high-volume trauma center with the third-highest trauma volume of any ED in the country. Additionally, HMC has the first Joint Commission-certified Comprehensive Stroke Center in Washington State and is also the county hospital for King County.

Academic Appointment

Education fellows are appointed as an “Acting Instructor” at the UW School of Medicine. Fellows will have benefits commensurate with a faculty appointment at the University of Washington. They are also provided with an academic enrichment fund that they can apply to conference registration, travel, and academic projects. Fellows qualify for a tuition exemption of up to 6 credits per quarter in University of Washington graduate programs, including the College of Education. Coursework offerings include educational statistics and measurement, survey development, and longitudinal sequences developing and performing qualitative research.

Eligibility and Application Process

We are now accepting applications for our 2025-2027 fellowship position. If you are interested in applying, please submit materials by August 12, 2024. Applicants will be notified by August 30th, 2024 regarding next steps.

There are a wide variety of outstanding EM medical education fellowships, and we are honored by any EM trainee who considers our program as the next step in their professional development.

Teaching and supervision of EM trainees are central to our fellowship experience. Because we have a 4-year residency program we only accept fellowship applications from graduates of 4-year programs or from graduates of 3-year programs who have at least 1 year of EM clinical work experience. All applicants should be board certified (or board eligible) by the American Board of Emergency Medicine. 

Please contact Alexis Rush to apply and for any questions regarding the fellowship. 

Applicants are asked to provide:

• A curriculum vitae with contact information for three references.
• A cover letter outlining their unique reasons for pursuing a Medical Education Research Fellowship, as well as their long-term goals as an academic emergency physician.