 GOLDBERG CENTER

By Emma Webb, MD

The Henry I. Goldberg Center for Advanced Imaging Education is the headquarters for all medical student education in the UCSF Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. The Center oversees radiology instruction in the pre-clinical curriculum, provides a course during clinical clerkships on the appropriate use of diagnostic tests, organizes lectures to senior students and a variety of radiology electives spanning both clinical applications of radiology and imaging research, and offers career advising and mentoring to UCSF medical students.

This year brought many long-awaited changes to medical education at UCSF. With the easing of pandemic-related restrictions, students returned to small group and clinical teaching in person. This meant we were able host a full complement of students in the reading rooms and interventional suites. We also returned to pre-clinical classrooms and skills training sessions to give students important early exposure to our field. For two years, ultrasound skills training was severely limited due to COVID-related restrictions. We are happy to report that it has resumed! We find this program is an excellent way to engage students in medical imaging early in their education. While remote and digital substitutes were a stop gap, it’s great to work directly with the students once again. Happily, our department’s many dedicated educators didn’t miss a beat, and were ready to meet the renewed demand.

During the pandemic, we reimagined our longstanding fourthyear classroom elective to be delivered virtually over Zoom. This remote format made the course even more accessible to many students. We no longer had to limit enrollment because of classroom size, and the course remains very popular. An added benefit is that the remote format makes teaching more accessible for many of our instructors, who no longer have to travel between hospital sites to lecture. This may be one of the lasting beneficial changes to our program from the pandemic, and for these reasons we have opted to keep the course remote for the near future.

Our Education Team

We were excited to have Maya Vella, MD, officially join our team as faculty after many years of contributing as a trainee in the department. She is now co-director for our Radiology Reading Room electives, where she will continue improving the student learning experience. Dr. Vella recently participated in the prestigious Harvard Macy program for future clinician educators, where her project addressed improving reading room experiences for medical students. Already a well-respected educator in our department, Dr. Vella brings her many talents and exciting ideas to this new leadership role.

Many faculty, fellows and resident members of the Medical Student Education Committee supervise the Goldberg Center’s medical student programs. We were fortunate to have such a dedicated group working in medical student education, which has helped us meet the many challenges of the rapidly shifting curriculum due to COVID interruptions. Emily Webb, MD, and Priyanka Jha, MD, served as committee co-chairs. Our trainee representatives include Jamie Holtz, MD, Kevin Sweetwood, MD, Adam Yen MD, and Amanda Liu, MD. Faculty committee members include Matt Amans, MD, Matt Barkovich, MD, Taylor Chung, MD, Miles Conrad, MD, Brett Elicker, MD, Vickie Feldstein, MD, Shital Gandhi, MD, Joe Leach, MD, Evan Lehrman, MD, Kevin Mc Gill, MD, Sujal Nanavati, MD, Rina Patel, MD, Elissa Price, MD, Leo Sugrue, MD, and Khai Vu, MD.

For the first time, there was a tie in the voting for the Outstanding Medical Student Educator Award for the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. The two immensely deserving recipients were Miles Conrad, MD, MPH, and Sujal Nanavati, MD, both of whom have taught interventional radiology to medical students for many years. Miles Conrad is course director for an interventional radiology elective for fourth-year students. He has long been innovating procedure skills sessions in the School of Medicine (SOM), and he serves as an SOM clinical coach and longitudinal mentor for a group of UCSF medical students. Sujal Nanavati is one of the core teachers in the interventional radiology elective at ZSFG and his impressive skills have been lauded with repeated nominations for this award. He was described by his nominator as an exemplary educator who is both technically exceptional and incredibly kind to his students.

For more information about the Goldberg Learning Center’s activities, please contact Samira Zebarjadian (Samira.Zebarjadian2@ucsf.edu) or visit radiology.ucsf.edu/education/medical-students.