2023 Spring STAR Educator Recipient: Jacob Feldman, MD
Jacob Feldman, MD
Assistant Professor
Department of Emergency Medicine
Nomination Submission:
At the beginning of residency I selected Dr. Feldman to be my personal mentor after just one week of introductory intern talks/lectures. He immediately struck me as someone who was immensely passionate about education and would make sure that the new interns became well-rounded and competent seniors. Over the course of the past three years that I’ve known him, he has continued to embody that sentiment. In particular, he has championed our department’s simulation program, creating a strong atmosphere and curriculum for practicing both frequent procedures like running codes and infrequent ones like transvenous pacers outside of the ED. He’s arranged sessions dedicated to improving interactions with niche populations, such as the transgender patient, and he has incorporated some exceptionally helpful yearly directed conferences into our Grand Rounds, such as financial literacy and what-to-look-for-in-a-job lectures. His passion for residency improvement and education actually extends beyond my own residency as well; he and I worked together on a project to assess whether resident needs were being met (using Maslow’s Hierarchy), and Dr. Feldman went on to send the survey to other emergency medicine programs in Texas. Dr. Feldman is the kind of faculty who not only is great at identifying needs but who also has the enthusiasm and competency to address and fix them. I cannot recommend him enough for this award.
Dr. Feldman exemplifies what it means to be a both an excellent educator and role model. He once stated “I aspire to be the attending physician and educator I wish I had in residency.” His commitment to education is evident in many ways- he has piloted multiple simulation initiatives for residents to learn to have difficult conversations with patients from a variety of backgrounds helping residents learn the value of differences in order to deliver high quality patient centered care. He has developed yearly directed conferences for the residents focusing on emotional intelligence, patient centered care, and resident wellness. Dr. Feldman is a compassionate leader in our department and an excellent example of providing a humanist approach to resident education with an emphasis on wellness and diversity- he is truly a Star Leader.
Dr. Feldman is one of my favorite attendings to work with, both on shift and during conference. He invests a lot of time in teaching, and has been particularly transformative in our grand rounds education. He initiated individual sim during grand rounds, which has helped significantly with focusing on resident weaknesses at the personal level that would otherwise not be identified in group sim. He has also created yearly directed conferences, where each residency year gets a lecture specific to them. For example, I am a third year resident, and he has created conferences related to job search, disability insurance, and financial planning, which was super helpful in prepping us for post residency life. In essence, Dr. Feldman embodies what it means to be an educator. He is kind, encouraging, approachable, and cares about his residents.
Jake has only ever demonstrated the upmost respect for his colleagues, learners, and patients. In the time he’s worked with us clinically there has yet to be a single complaint from his patients. From learner evaluation from both residents and medical students he continues to earn some of the highest scores within our department. Our graduating PGY3 class this year unanimously ranked his teaching as “outstanding”. His learners note that he is “by far one of the best to work with and learn from – is a true asset to the program”. He “gives great feedback, always willing to teach on any subject and can teach at any level. Very supportive on shift and appreciate that he always checks in with how we are doing outside of the hospital.” Jake takes pride in teaching the residents to be attentive to the quality of their bedside manner, and the importance of helping patients feel cared for in the, at times, chaotic environment of the Emergency Department.
During his time as our Simulation Director he’s taken this educational program which had minimal supplies and developed it into a program that integrates our MS3s and MS4s, covers a wide variety of topics, and fills holes in our residency curriculum. One simulation lab is focused specifically on challenging conversations with patients, designed to help teach our residents and students respectful ways of approaching sensitive discussions with patients, including victims of domestic violence, and identifying preferred pronouns for transgender patients.
Jake has also developed a longitudinal curriculum for our residents to help supplement important areas of their education including financial planning and investing, wellness and burnout, developing emotional intelligence, and long term career planning with topics including career specialization, different reimbursement models in EM, and important aspects of signing contracts.
Jake is a contentious, patient, and compassionate educator. His first priority in patient care is ensuring a positive care experience for his patients, a passion he strives to share with his learners. His students have mentioned how he provides “great constructive criticism and feedback. He states specific concepts and abilities I can improve on”. And that he “is an excellent teacher” who “turns almost every interaction into a teaching moment for his residents and medical students”. His learners have also mentioned that when caring for patients with terminal conditions they appreciated the guidance he provided for both the family and the team. He “showed me that when there’s nothing left to do for the patient you can still help the family”.
Jake is very approachable for his learners and participates in the active curricular improvement of our clerkship, and one-on-one mentorship with our Emergency Medicine bound MS3s and MS4s. He teaches the introductory lab for each of our orientations and helps to establish a culture of respect, and that all questions are good questions while also holding our students to the standard that they will need to be ready to be physicians in a few short years.
As part of his Simulation curriculum, educational experiences he’s developed to enrich the development of both our residents and medical students, he’s created several cases highlighting inequity in access to healthcare resources, and how a patient’s health literacy can adversely affect healthcare outcomes without proper education. One specific simulation day is dedicated to having challenging conversations with patients, including identifying subtle signs of domestic violence, compassionate ways to break bad news, and respectful ways to broach identifying a patient’s pronouns and building rapport with LGBTQIA patients.
Dr. Feldman has been exemplary in creating a robust simulation program at the Emergency Medicine program. We had a rather dry and underused opportunity to include simulation prior to his assumption of the position and he has made great strides to improve the educational experience. Some of his achievements include: 1.) Involving core faculty in case writing for simulation to increase the breadth of experience. 2.) Ensuring a quality and well thought out guided debriefing session accompanies all simulations. 3.) Incorporating social elements of medicine into simulation, such as “having difficult conversations with patients and families” or “socially marginalized groups such as transgender patients” or “how to apply DEI to your practice”. 4.) Focusing on yearly milestones which bring emotional intelligence and financial literacy into the resident curriculum. 5.) Rare procedural skills workshops.
The role of simulation for ER training cannot be understated. It is an equalizer that allows everyone in the training program to experience difficult cases without the potluck of which patients happen to come in on your shift. In a consequence free environment, you can determine what deficiencies you have and practice providing medicine in all of your areas that you struggle. It also allows for practicing difficult procedures prior to attempting them on real patients.
In addition to his role in simulation, Dr. Feldman has been a wonderful mentor in Medical Education. He strives to provide feedback that is both constructive, insightful, and consistent. He’s the kind of person who takes an interest in resident learning because it is important to him, and you can feel that as a recipient. He truly is interested in YOU, not just satisfying his job requirements. He is kind and compassionate, which inspires those around him to be the same. He has been a driving motivation for the faculty of our department to take a more active role in teaching, which was something that was certainly lacking at the beginning of my residency.
In closing, please consider Dr. Feldman for the LSOM Stars of Education award. He goes above and beyond to bring some of the most important methods of teaching to our residents and medical students. He mobilizes faculty within the department to provide a broad range of experiences. He is a prime example of compassionate education and is enthusiastic about teaching.
Dr. Feldman has been a staple of education during my tenure in the UTHSCSA Emergency Medicine residency – in particular, his guidance, drive, and desire to develop varied and full-fledged educational opportunities have been greatly appreciated by myself, my co-residents and by medical students rotating through the Emergency Department. He successfully develops and implements thorough and unique SIM lab experiences on a monthly basis including tough oral board cases, hands on skills labs and collaboration with other faculty to produce fun adventure based simulation including “Survivor” day and Wilderness Medicine adventures.
This past year working with and having guidance from Dr. Feldman has been paramount to my personal development as well as the 2022-2023 academic chief resident. I know that I can reach out to and rely on him at any hour if I have questions or concerns about how to best provide educational opportunities to my colleagues. His guidance also flows into clinical work where he can be counted on to provide non-judgmental guidance and feedback on clinical decision making, efficiency and leadership skills.
Though LSOM and UTHSCSA have many individuals that are deserving of recognition, I can think of no other that best exemplifies the characteristics and qualities sought for this reward and full-heartedly stand behind my nomination for Dr. Feldman.
Dr. Feldman works tirelessly to grow the simulation program into an engaging monthly activity. It’s a safe space for us to practice our skills, make mistakes that we can learn from, and then take that knowledge back to the department. He encourages as many faculty as possible to get involved and either teach, or create, cases that they find engaging or have experienced in their careers. He designed a curriculum which not only complements the weaknesses of our program, but also includes non-standard elements. For example, we have a session dedicated to managing difficult conversations, like death notifications, and building rapport with diverse populations, one case we ran was specifically for transgender populations
Additionally, he developed evaluative individual simulations which are sims performed solo with one-on-one feedback from a faculty member. This not only exposes individual areas for growth, but also gives us time to discuss a case in-depth with faculty without the pressure of having to run the department simultaneously. Outside of that, he developed models for us to practice pericardiocentesis and crash C-sections on. He even picked up pork ribs for us to practice chest tubes on. He’s also developed yearly directed conferences to supplement our education on topics outside of medicine that pertain to our careers, including emotional intelligence, financial literacy and signing contracts.
As a 3rd year resident ending my journey at the LSOM there are mentors and leaders in the department who stand out. The first person comes to mind without a doubt is Dr. Feldman. He is one of those inspirational mentors who not only engages in organized curriculum like setting up our simulation events but more importantly he is a mentor/role model who cares. I can remember being an intern and Dr. Feldman pulling me to the side to give feedback in a way that highlighted areas to improve on and motivating me to try new ways of approaching problems. Now towards the end of my residency career Dr. Feldman serves as a mentor to bounce ideas off of, someone I turn to when I feel uncertain about clinical cases and as someone I can genuinely talk to about navigating life.