Douglas S. Smink, MD, MPH, was awarded a 2019 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) at the ACGME Annual Educational Conference.
The Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award honors program directors who find innovative ways to teach residents and to provide quality health care while remaining connected to the initial impulse to care for others in this environment. Parker J. Palmer’s book The Courage to Teach promotes the concept of “living divided no more,” which has proven relevant to teaching in academic health centers.
Douglas S. Smink, MD, MPH
Associate Chair of Education, Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Program Director, General Surgery Residency, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Douglas S. Smink, MD, MPH, is a minimally invasive general surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. His clinical interests include foregut surgery, biliary tract disease and abdominal wall hernias.
Dr. Smink received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, completed a General Surgery Residency at BWH and a Minimally Invasive Surgery Fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He is the associate chair of education in the Department of Surgery and program director of the General Surgery Residency.
Dr. Smink is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Surgical Education and serves as a member of the editorial board of the Surgical Council on Resident Education (SCORE).
His research focuses on resident and faculty education through simulation and he is co-leader of the Surgical Culture Program at the BWH Center for Surgery and Public Health (CSPH), where he studies how to teach communication, leadership and decision-making to surgeons and surgical teams.