Dr. Helfgott’s own training began in his hometown of Montreal at McGill University, followed by fellowship training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. While he spent several years working in the Brigham research labs, Dr. Helfgott says his true passion is “on the clinical side, caring for patients and teaching rheumatology to trainees.” He has spent his entire career at Brigham and Women’s, where he serves as the director of education and of the fellowship training program. When he’s not working, Dr. Helfgott is an avid runner. He also loves to cook, “but not using recipes. It’s more fun this way!”
Dr. Brasington, who thinks of himself as a “teacher who happens to be a doctor,” has similar goals for TR. Professor and head of the fellowship program at Washington University (WashU) in St. Louis, his goal is to see the articles in TR used as tools for education. “I would like to make the best evidence-based medicine accessible to the average reader in the [rheumatology] community who may not have the time that we academics do.”
Dr. Brasington, who has been on the faculty at WashU for more than 15 years, attended Harvard University in Boston for his undergraduate studies, followed by medical school at Duke University in Durham, N.C. He completed his internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship training at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Prior to his move to St. Louis, Dr. Brasington spent 10 years in practice at the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, Wis., and through this experience learned just how difficult it is for practicing rheumatologists to find time to review the literature. “The missions of academic rheumatology and medicine in general are to try to help in the continuing education of people in practice,” he says. “TR is very straightforward … you can read the articles and get the message pretty quickly.”
