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GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences Center for Faculty Excellence
June 2024 Faculty Spotlight
Excellence in teaching & learning, scholarly endeavors, and leadership are all around us at SMHS. The Center for Faculty Excellence would like to Spotlight our faculty and staff contributions to SMHS, George Washington University, and beyond. Each month we will spotlight faculty and staff from across the GW Academic Medical Enterprise. We want to thank our highlighted members for sharing with us their advice and perspectives!
- SMHS Center for Faculty Excellence
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Join the CFE as we highlight Stephanie Sharps, MD, FACP, who discusses the development of the GW Regional Medical Campus at LifeBridge Health (RMC) and future initiatives to provide increased opportunities to medical students. Dr. Sharps also discusses her role as Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the Regional Medical Campus, and the impact she hopes to have on trainees and the growth of the RMC.
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Biography
Dr. Stephanie Sharps hails from Columbia, MD. She completed medical school at Duke University in Durham, NC. After medical school, she completed an Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, AL, and subsequently a Nephrology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the course of her career, Dr. Sharps has worked as both an academic Nephrologist and General Internist. For the past 10 years she has devoted much of her time to Medical Education. She served as an Assistant Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency at Thomas Jefferson University. In 2016, Dr. Sharps relocated to Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, where she most recently served as the Program Director for Internal Medicine Residency. Currently, she practices outpatient Internal Medicine and was appointed the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs for the Regional Medical Campus at Lifebridge Health for George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences in July 2023.
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Interview Q/A
How long have you been at GWSMHS? What drew you to your current position?
Stephanie: I joined GW as faculty in 2019, prior to us starting the Regional Medical Campus (RMC). During that time, medical students came to Sinai Hospital for some of their clerkship rotations, so I was engaged early in setting up those rotations through my role as the Program Director of the Internal Medicine Residency at Sinai. I have been in my current role as the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the regional campus since July 2023.
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Why did you decide to pursue a career in Internal Medicine?
Stephanie: Like many medical students, I came to medical school interested in doing many things, but I really found my calling within Internal Medicine. The way this specialty looks and thinks about patient concerns, navigating problems, and figuring out individualized management plans to determine how best to give care is the best part of what I do. All those aspects are very collaborative in nature, allowing us to work in teams and practice groups, so I knew it was the community for me.
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Can you tell us more about your responsibilities and role as Assistant Dean for Student Affairs for the Regional Medical Campus (RMC)?
Stephanie: My clinical background is as an internist, so I am a primary care doctor and see patients in outpatient internal medicine. I am also a preceptor for the third-year primary care clerkship and longitudinal primary care clerkship.
As the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs for the RMC, I support and work with our third and fourth-year medical students. Those final years in medical school are pivotal for students who are starting to make decisions about their careers, choosing a specialty, and applying for residency. My role for the students is to support them through career and academic advising and ensure they have the resources to help them along their path. I also ensure that they have the resources to take care of themselves as individuals regarding their physical and mental well-being.
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What is your favorite thing about your current role or responsibilities?
Stephanie: My favorite part is working with students. This is a very unique time in their career and professional journey, where they are trying to figure out how to navigate these major decisions. At times, I think from the student's perspective, it feels overwhelming and like there is not enough time or information. My role allows me to meet with students individually and discuss how to organize thoughts, gain experience, and make choices about rotations, which is very rewarding for me.
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Can you share more about the Regional Medical Campus? What are some unique aspects of the RMC?
Stephanie: We officially started the regional campus last spring, so now that we're a year into it we have had two classes of students. We have about 15 students that are with us now, but we are continuing to recruit for an incoming class. This incoming class will be the first cohort of students who are designated to the RMC at the time of admission. Our long-term goal is for there to be 60 students at the regional campus, so 30 in both the third-year and fourth-year classes.
Our regional campus, of course, is located in Baltimore, so our primary clinical site is Sinai Hospital. One of the unique things about our campus and why many of the students choose to come to the regional campus is the small class setting, and with only 30 students each year it's a very small cohort compared to the main Foggy Bottom campus. Another unique thing about the regional campus is all the primary clerkships get done at a single site, whereas at Foggy Bottom they are rotated into a site lottery. Students like that they stay in a familiar place and can focus primarily on the particular clerkship and not have to figure out where they are going and how to get there. Some of our students also have ties to the area, so it gives them the ability to remain in a familiar community. We have graduate medical education, so some students are interested in continuing at Sinai for their residency training.
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What about the future of the Regional Medical Campus excites you?
Stephanie: It is very exciting to be part of a process from the very early stages, and every day, we learn about new initiatives and how we can continue to expand students' opportunities. Creating more opportunities for students includes collaborating with other groups, such as the population health group at LifeBridge Health, and allows students to be involved in a number of initiatives there. We also do numerous things within our local community in Baltimore and DC that provide unique opportunities for students.
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What impact do you hope your efforts will have on your trainees through these roles?
Stephanie: The impact I hope to have on the students is that support that guides them to decide their career trajectory and path with choosing a speciality. Helping them pinpoint their consideration, and how to choose electives that help them make those decisions. Our larger goal as a regional campus is to support our community, and our hope is that after spending some time here during medical school, our students would consider staying on with us for residency or even coming back as faculty to continue to care for the needs of the patients in our community.
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What are you looking forward to working on or doing here at GW?
Stephanie: I am looking forward to working on our population health initiatives, which are currently in place at the Foggy Bottom campus and that we would like to expand upon here at Sinai. It would be a great way to grow and mature as a campus and look at the specific needs of our community and how we can incorporate that into the curriculum.
We would like to further identify the needs of the community in Baltimore and how our healthcare system in Baltimore is really poised to make sure that we're addressing those needs. Doing this along with students is a great way to teach the importance of community and learn from them a different perspective on how to consider these concepts. Oftentimes, when you are in the action of caring for patients daily it can be hard to take a step back and look at the big picture of community health, and our often students bring that fresh perspective that is needed.
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How does this spotlight/recognition make you feel?
Stephanie: It is very humbling to be recognized in this way. Often, as clinicians and faculty, you feel like you are one person at an organization that just comes to work every day and does their best, so it's nice to know people around are interested in the work you're doing and about the Regional Medical Campus. Since our regional campus is still fairly new, any chance I get to tell people about what we're doing and how our students are thriving on the campus is a great feeling to share with others.
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What is one thing that keeps you motivated during the day?
Stephanie: The unique thing about medical education is feeling like you're a part of someone's journey. Education in the health field tends to be somewhat of a long journey, so many times, you interact with someone early on and then sometimes again at later stages, and being able to see that transition is truly remarkable. Sometimes, students even reach out and update me on what they are now doing, and it is very gratifying and motivating to know that I was able to contribute to the education and training of another physician.
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