On October 27, 2021, Tracy Fulton, Professor of Biochemistry, and Course Director of the REG’N Foundational Block will receive the AAMC’s highest honor for teaching. This national award was established in 1988 to recognize outstanding contributions to medical education. Over the past two decades, Dr. Fulton has worked to transform medical biochemistry from a siloed collection of enzymes and pathways to an applied discipline focused on understanding. She worked with a team to implement and study the Pathways of Human Metabolism Map, a visual tool for health professions students that promotes deep learning and application of classroom concepts to clinical problems.

In an interview with the UCSF School of Pharmacy, Dr. Fulton shared that in her courses, she is more interested in what students can do with the information they learn than whether they can recite it from memory. Students say of her teaching, which embraces collaborative learning and prioritizes application of their biochemistry lessons to real-life scenarios, “I feel like this style of learning will serve me so much better as a clinician.”

Emiliano Lemus Hufstedler, MS, a 2021 Pisacano Scholar, is a 4th-year medical student in the Joint Medical Program (JMP). They are also a health disparities researcher and trainer on transgender-affirming healthcare. After completing a bachelor’s degree in Biochemical Studies at Harvard College, Emiliano worked for a decade as a community organizer, serving as founding director of Erósfera, Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Puebla, Mexico, and co-director of Bluestockings Activist Center in New York City.

Emiliano’s work in medical school has included participation in the Program in Medical Education for the Urban Underserved (PRIME-US), coordination of a free clinic for street-based youth and LGBTQ patients, organizing with the JMP chapter of White Coats for Black Lives, and mentoring LGBTQ premed students and other students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in medicine. Their recent research explores and advocates for the health needs of transgender youth experiencing homelessness.

Emiliano also recently won the AMA Foundation David Jones Peck, MD Health Equity Scholarship. This scholarship is awarded to medical students that demonstrate a commitment to addressing health disparities and promoting health equity in marginalized and minoritized communities.

The following faculty have taken on new or additional roles within our assessment and curriculum team. For a listing of our Bridges Educator Leaders, please visit the Bridges Faculty page.

Success with Limits on Student Clinical Work Hours

To promote student wellbeing and ensure compliance with the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the UCSF School of Medicine has been monitoring and reporting on student clinical work hours in the 3rd and 4th year rotations on a regular basis. Clerkship leadership revised the Clinical Work Hours Policy in January 2021 to further define work hours and place a procedural limit on scheduling students to no more than 72 hours of clinical work hours per week. Due to the collective hard work of clerkship directors, faculty, residents and staff, student reports of clinical work hours violations have diminished substantially in 2021. The policy revision and close monitoring allow clerkships to track whether their students are working more than the scheduled 72 hours so that educators can take corrective action and avoid reaching or exceeding our limit of 80 work hours per week as defined in our Clinical Work Hours Policy. To report Clinical Work Hours violations, students should report through the end-of-clerkship evaluation, or submit a SAFE report.