ACR Distinguished Clinician Scholar Award
Stephen Paget, MD
Physician-in-Chief Emeritus, Professor of Medicine, Hospital for Special Surgery, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York
Background: An ACR Master, Dr. Paget is among the veterans of the field. He was physician-in-chief and chair of the division of rheumatology at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and the Joseph P. Routh Professor of Medicine and Rheumatic Disease at Weill for 15 years. He remains as director of HSS’s recently implemented Rheumatology Academy of Medical Educators and is on the board of directors for the hospital’s Lupus Clinical Trials Consortium. He is a member and former co-chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) rheumatology subspecialty board. A graduate of Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., he completed his residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, was a clinical associate at the Arthritis and Rheumatism Branch of the of NIH, and completed his rheumatology fellowship at HSS, where he has practiced since 1975.
Q: You have referred to the pedagogy of medical school as the weakest leg of academia. Why?
A: In the past, all of us have grown up with this “see one, do one, teach one” concept. It’s basically like being in a craft and you learn, whether it’s making a table or doing a spinal tap. You basically learn from people who learned before…and much of the focus because of funding, reputation, etc., has been on research and clinical work. Now don’t get me wrong, medical schools are wonderful learning environments and they do know how to teach and assess education…But of the doctors that are actually face to face with the medical students, residents, and fellows, few of them really understand what education is all about.
