Spring 2021’s Awards, Appointments & Announcements in Rheumatology

Joanne Valeriano-Marcet, MD, Receives ACGME Teaching Award

At the University of South Florida College of Medicine, Joanne Valeriano-Marcet, MD, teaches a broad spectrum of medical students. She is program director for the Division of Rheumatology, directs the Doctoring 2 Curriculum, a course for all second-year medical students that focuses on physical diagnosis, and mentors her own rheumatology fellows. 

Dr. Valeriano-Marcet has also participated in several curriculum development activities. She helped review the ACR Rheumatology Core Curriculum, sat on an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) committee to develop rheumatology-specific milestones and has written questions for the American Board of Internal Medicine’s rheumatology certification exam. 

She’s now the recipient of the ACGME Courage to Teach Award, given each fall to exemplar graduate medical professors.

Dr. Valeriano-Marcet’s teaching activities have also included developing and teaching curricula for physical therapy and physician assistant students. So it’s no wonder that she received the Outstanding Teacher Award at her institution in 2011 and that the School of Physical Therapy gave her an Interprofessionalism Award in 2010. 

“I have the best of all worlds,” she says, because she teaches the whole range of next-generation clinicians. Regarding her duties as program director for the rheumatology fellowship program, Dr. Valeriano-Marcet remarks, “I can’t talk enough about the support I get from the ACR and my colleagues around the nation.” 

Being involved with the ACR subcommittees has helped enormously in her work, she says. “I can’t encourage program directors enough to become involved, and to use these [ACR] resources. It helps keep us ahead of the curve.” 

Of the range of her teaching activities at the University of South Florida, she notes that the Doctoring course aligns perfectly with what rheumatologists do: “We have to be very skilled at history taking and physical diagnosis. It’s exciting to be in academics.”

Gretchen Henkel is a health and medical journalist based in California.