Title: Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor
Education:
MD, Medical College of Virginia
Postgraduate Training:
psychiatry residency, UCSF; research fellowship, UCSF; Masters in Education, University of California, Berkeley
Biography Summary:
Dr. Azzam completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Rochester, before starting medical school at the Medical College of Virginia. During medical school, he participated in the inaugural year of the National Institutes of Health’s “Clinical Research Training Program.” After completing medical school, he participated in the research track of the general adult psychiatry residency program at the University of California, San Francisco Department of Psychiatry. He then completed a two-year research fellowship in psychiatric genetics at the San Francisco Veterans’ Administration Medical Center, before discovering that his true passion was in medical education. Deciding that 27 years of formal education just wasn’t enough, he went back to school for a two-year masters’ degree in education, at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on quantitative methods and evaluation.
Currently, he is director of the “Problem-Based Learning” curriculum at the UC Berkeley—UCSF Joint Medical Program, co-director of the “Foundations of Patient Care” course for first and second-year medical students at UCSF, and co-director of the “Health Professions Education” Pathway to Discovery at UCSF.
Clinical Expertise:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Group Psychotherapy for Chronic Medical Conditions
Educational Expertise:
Dr. Azzam's teaching activities focus on undergraduate medical education, and include 1) direct teaching, 2) curriculum development, 3) advising and mentorship, and 4) educational scholarship.
Research Areas:
Research focusing on the efficacy of various instructional approaches in stimulating medical students’ acquisition, retention and application of content knowledge in their evolving roles as clinicians.
Keywords:
Undergraduate medical education, pre-clerkship coursework, problem-based learning, assessment, evaluation, curriculum development, standardized patients, health professions education
Administrative Assistant: Beverly McGehee - Contact Information
Campus Location: Parnassus