UCSF Radiology Faculty are Part of the School of Medicine Coaching Program
At UC San Francisco, the Bridges Curriculum educates UCSF medical students to prepare and excel as physician leaders to transform 21st century health care. Part of this curriculum is the coaching program, designed to provide academic guidance to promote professional and personal development throughout the medical school experience. Miles Conrad, MD, MPH, a professor in the Interventional Radiology Section has been a coach since 2020, and Preeti Sukerkar, MD, PhD, assistant clinical professor in the Musculoskeletal Imaging Section, joined the program as a coach in 2021.
“The coaching role is a 20% faculty position with the UCSF School of Medicine. It entails teaching exam skills and introducing fundamental clinical medicine, with an emphasis on patient care, physical exam, professionalism, and clinical reasoning. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are placed at the forefront of the curriculum,” says Dr. Conrad.
The 2019-2020 academic year was the first time that the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging participated in the Bridges coaching program. Each coach guides a cohort of six first-year medical students through their medical school curriculum.
Dr. Sukerkar welcomed her first cohort of medical students at the start of this academic year, and she will be their coach for the next four years. “I am both incredibly honored and humbled to be a big part of these students’ lives for the next four years. I look forward to guiding them through medical school, teaching them as much as I can, and most importantly, watching them grow into confident physicians,” says Dr. Sukerkar who is also the diagnostic radiology residency site director at San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center (SFVAMC), chief of Musculoskeletal Imaging at SFVAMC, and an attending radiologist in Musculoskeletal based at both UCSF and SFVAMC. “My students are based in the Department of Radiology at SFVAMC and will become an integral part of our microsystem here. Many of our core radiologists, including Eugene Huo, MD, Joseph Leach, MD, PhD, Stefanie Weinstein, MD, and Michael Hope, MD, as well as our schedulers and techs, are also thrilled to work with the students while they are at the VA,” shares Dr. Sukerkar.
“The Bridges program is organized so that all medical students are divided into small groups and assigned to a microsystem within the hospital,” says Dr. Conrad. “A microsystem is a small group of people who work together regularly to provide care for specific groups of patients.”
Dr. Conrad is an Interventional Radiology (IR) attending at Zuckerberg San Francisco General (ZSFG), UCSF and SFVAMC. “As I am based at ZSFG, student’s microsystem or home base is the IR service. Although the students are assigned to IR at ZSFG, it does not mean they will go into Radiology, but their introduction to clinical medicine takes place at this site,” explains Dr. Conrad.
Learn more about the UCSF School of Medicine Bridges Curriculum.
Parts of this story originally appeared in Images Magazine, our department’s annual publication. View current and past issues here.