Schumacher named to international fellowship program

Daniel Schumacher, MD, PhD, professor in the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, has been invited to participate in the Karolinska Institutet Prize for Research in Medical Education Fellows Program. The elite program selects highly promising mid-career medical education researchers from around the world every other year to attend a weeklong mentoring and development program in Sweden.

The aim of the initiative is to develop future candidates for the Karolinska Institutet Prize for Research in Medical Education (KIPRIME). The Karolinska Institutet Prize is one of the highest honors in the world for health science education research. The honor is awarded every other year — the next will be in 2024 — and comes with a prize of 100,000 Euros. The Karolinska Institutet is ranked among the world's leading medical schools and the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet selects the annual recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Fellows are nominated by past KIPRIME award winners. Schumacher will be a member of the third cohort of 14 fellows and will travel to Solna, Sweden, where the Karolinska Institutet is located, Aug. 21 to 23.

“I was very excited to be chosen as a KIPRIME Fellow,” Schumacher says. “The first two cohorts were comprised of seasoned, talented medical education researchers for whom I have a lot of respect, and many I look up to and have looked to in efforts to learn and develop myself as a medical education researcher. To be included with such an incredible group is a very special honor that I cherish and am incredibly grateful for.”

The August program will be led by previous KIPRIME awardees.

“This is like bringing together multiple Nobel laureates to focus on developing the next generation of already internationally recognized med ed researchers to take their research programs to the next level. I expect the programming to focus less on building research skills to do individual projects and more on developing skills to effectively lead entire programs of research that move the field forward and impact lasting change on how we think and what we do in medical education,” Schumacher explains.

Schumacher says he is proud of the medical education research that is conducted at the College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s, with several faculty internationally recognized for their work. He credits the collective effort for his latest recognition.

“I think things like the KIPRIME Fellowship for me is a testament to the collective med ed research talent we house here,” he says. “There are five of us who are known internationally for our work in assessment in medical education. No place in North America can match us in so much assessment talent.”

This is not the first international recognition Schumacher has received. The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada named him the 2021 International Medical Educator of the Year. The Royal College said Schumacher was “renowned as an education innovator and mentor and has made profound contributions to resident education locally in Cincinnati and also internationally.”

Schumacher has been a national leader in the development, implementation and study of entrustable professional activities in the United States, funded by large grants through organizations such as the American Board of Pediatrics Foundation, the American Board of Medical Specialties Research and Education Foundation and the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. He has garnered over $3 million in educational grant funding and has led dozens of national and international presentations and workshops, lectured widely on the use of entrustment in assessment, and has published 124 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Schumacher was a Macy Faculty Scholar in 2018.

Feature image of Daniel Schumacher, MD, PhD, courtesy of Cincinnati Children's.