Born and raised in San Francisco, Dr. O’Rourke obtained a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated as valedictorian from the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, D.C., then completed internal medicine training at David Grant USAF Medical Center, Fairfield, Calif., remaining there first as chief resident, then as staff internist and program director of the Transitional Year residency, while concurrently serving on the volunteer clinical faculty at the University of California, Davis. He subsequently completed rheumatology fellowship training at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, prior to his Wake Forest appointment.
As a clinician educator, Dr. O’Rourke has developed a career creating, providing, directing and mentoring exceptional learning opportunities across the continuum of graduate and post-graduate medical education. In addition to his role as a program director, while at Wake Forest he served on numerous medical education committees, including chairing the second-year medical school curriculum committee. He is a founding and active member of the Carolinas Fellows Collaborative (CFC), a consortium of program directors and their fellows whose work over the past 20 years has included materials that have served as the foundation for subsequent national curricula.
For the ACR, Dr. O’Rourke participated in the creation of the Rheumatology Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) and Rheumatology Curricular Milestones, and was a member of the ACGME Milestones 2.0 Working Group in the creation of the Rheumatology Milestones 2.0. He currently serves as chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Rheumatology Board Certification and Maintenance of Certification Exam Committee.
Dr. O’Rourke has received teaching awards from learners at all institutions where he has worked, was a 2001–04 recipient of an ACR Clinician Scholar Educator Award and was designated an ACR Master in 2024. His ACR committee work began as a member, then chair, of the Executive Committee of the ACR/ARHP Rehabilitation Rheumatology Committee, and over time has included serving on the Committee on Education, the Committee on Training and Workforce, serving as chair of its Curriculum Subcommittee, the Annual Meeting Planning Committee twice, and as an education grant reviewer for the Rheumatology Research Foundation. He has contributed enduring materials for the CARE program, the ARP Advanced Rheumatology Course and the adult Virtual Rheumatology Practicum, and has been honored to speak numerous times at the ACR’s annual meetings.
“I am supremely honored and humbled to be recognized by the ACR for my work as a program director and educator,” says Dr. O’Rourke. “Words cannot adequately convey what a privilege it has been to contribute over my career to the training of rheumatologists and rheumatology health professionals, and to be included in the group of my colleagues who have won this award.”
