CHICAGO, Sept. 29, 2008 – The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has chosen 11 program directors and three designated institutional officials to receive the Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach and Courage to Lead awards. The annual awards, selected from a large pool of nominees, honor outstanding teachers and leaders in graduate medical education.

The Courage to Teach Award is given to program directors, nominated by their peers and students, who have innovative residency program curricula, and who have improved graduate medical education and served as exemplary role models for residents. The award is named for Parker J. Palmer, PhD, a sociologist and teacher who wrote The Courage to Teach.

The Parker J. Palmer Courage to Lead Award is given to designated institutional officials, who are responsible for all ACGME-accredited residency programs at an institution, for creating an optimum learning environment for residents; encouraging the ethical, professional, and personal development of residents; and ensuring safe and appropriate patient care.

The Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach and Courage to Lead award recipients will receive plaques and checks for $1,000 at a luncheon held during the ACGME’s Annual Educational Conference, which will take place March 5-8 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Dallas.  The award recipients will also be invited to attend an educational retreat next May at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Mich.

The 2008-09 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach and Courage to Lead recipients are:

Courage to Teach Awardees

• Michael S. Beeson, MD, emergency medicine, Summa Health System, Akron, Ohio
• James Burks, MD, internal medicine, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas
• Peter Carek, MD, family medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina
• Edmund Cibas, MD, cytopathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
• Nancy Gaba, MD, obstetrics and gynecology, George Washington University, Washington, DC
• Sheela Kapre, MD, internal medicine, San Joaquin General Hospital, French Camp, California
• Gail Manos, MD, psychiatry, Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth, Virginia
• D. Karl Montague, MD, urology, Cleveland Clinic,  Cleveland, Ohio (recently retired with 31 years experience as program director)

• Lori Schuh, MD, neurology, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan
• James Valentine, MD, surgery, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, Texas
• Richard Welling, MD, surgery, Good Samaritan Hospital, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Parker J. Palmer Courage to Lead Awardees

• Lois Bready, MD, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas
• Diane Hartmann, MD, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York
• Andrew Filak, MD, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio

###
The ACGME is a private, non-profit organization that accredits approximately 8,400 residency programs in 126 specialties and subspecialties that educate 107,000 residents. Its mission is to improve the quality of health care in the United States by assessing and advancing the quality of resident physicians' education.