Shining Light on Mental Health Stigma in Medicine

Dr. Scott-Vernaglia is the Associate Chief for Clinical Faculty for the MassGeneral Hospital for Children and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.   She is the current incumbent of the John C. Robinson Chair in Pediatrics at MGH.  She is a senior pediatrics editor for NEJM’s Knowledge+ and Resident360 educational projects.  She recently stepped down after a 12 year tenure as Pediatrics Residency Director, during which time she was honored with the Partners Outstanding Program Director award in 2018.

Dr. Scott-Vernaglia maintains an active primary care practice at the MGH Pediatric Group Practice and where she teaches as an outpatient preceptor for residents, medical and nurse practitioner students.  Her areas of interest in medical education include simulation, humanizing medical errors, using family voices in teaching, and narrative medicine.   She co-created a longitudinal simulation program for pediatric residents at MGH that began in 2011 and continues to this day, training and assessing all pediatric residents as MGHfC in core pediatric knowledge, skills, and attitudes.  In her role as Associate Chief, she works on physician wellbeing, educator development, and faculty promotion.  She is passionate about physician mental health and decreasing stigma associated with mental illness among clinicians.  She is a 2021 Klibanski Scholar speaking about this topic and has a TEDxMGH talk available as well.