‘Teacher’s Teacher’ Don Bordley Nationally Honored
Don Bordley, MD, (Res ’81), professor of Medicine and vice chair of Medicine for Education, recently received the 2017 Dema C. Daley Founders Award from the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM), an organization dedicated to improving and supporting the graduate education of doctors in internal medicine. Named for Dema C. Daley, an APDIM leader for 15 years until her death in 2002, the award is the organization’s highest distinction, recognizing excellence in education, innovation and leadership. Bordley, who has shaped the careers of hundreds of physicians over the last 40 years, is known for revolutionizing the Internal Medicine residency program director role at URMC and for upholding bedside teaching as 60
ROCHESTER MEDICINE | 2017 – V1
a critically important way to create the very best physicians. Bordley received the award at the annual APDIM conference in Baltimore March 22, accompanied by his wife and three children. “I went into medicine to become a teacher,” says the Yale graduate who taught English for two years before deciding to follow his father and brother into the medical field. “Of everything I have done in my life, I have found the greatest reward in helping medical students and residents develop their bedside diagnostic skills and become experts at communicating, interviewing and listening to patients. Rochester has been a uniquely wonderful and supportive place for me to pursue my passion, and for education in internal medicine to flourish.”
URMC CEO and School of Medicine and Dentistry dean Mark B. Taubman, MD, says Bordley is one of a small group of individuals who helped transform residency education around the country. “Common to these physicians was a deep love of teaching and a desire to focus one's career on elevating the residency experience,” says Taubman. “This replaced the more typical revolving door in which the residency director was a relatively junior faculty member who was assigned the position for a few years as a career stepping stone. The number of innovations that Don championed over the years in his role as residency director is staggering, and many of these have been emulated throughout the country.” Bordley came to Rochester in 1976, after