About the Fellowship

The Department of Surgery, under the mentorship of Drs. Tom Krummel and Sanjeev Dutta introduced a two year Surgical Education Research Fellowship in July 2007. This program was offered to surgery residents at Stanford who were interested in surgical education.  During this Fellowship, the resident spent two years designing, implementing, analyzing, presenting and publishing research projects in their field(s) of interest. Past projects have included research on surgical skills and, boot camps, and simulation in patient safety. Fellows accomplished formal training in medical education by attending the ACS surgeons as educator course and simulation training through the CISL course.  

Since 2009, the fellowship has been under the direction of James Lau, MD, FACS and has included new scholarship areas of gender differences in confidence levels of residents, curriculum design, emotional intelligence, learner feedback, warm-up, trends in evaluation, and clinical decision-making.  Works in these areas have been presented nationally and in manuscript form.  Scholarship and networking in medical education are accomplished by encouraging fellows to apply for the Masters of Health Professions Education Program at the University of Illinois Chicago for completion during the two years of fellowship.  The Goodman Surgical Education Center supports this Masters Degree if the fellow is accepted and completes the program. 

The fellows gain valuable experience in all aspects of designing, implementing, and evaluating several educational program curricula.  These include the General Surgery skills curriculum for residents and the skills program for the medical student Surgery Core Clerkship. Fellows have full access to and assist in the operational management of the Goodman Surgical Education Center and all its myriad of activities.

The Education Fellows also are expected to be examples nationally and present their works of scholarship locally at Stanford and at national meetings.  They meet and have access to surgical education leaders nationally and internationally by attending the ACS – Education Institutes Consortium Meeting and Postgraduate Course annually.  They attend Surgical Education Week (APDS/Association for Surgical Education) and ACS Clinical Congress if they present research projects. 

The fellows are intimately involved in the planning and implementation of the Department of Surgery Annual Residency Education Retreat every spring.  This includes selecting the keynote speaker and the two to three areas of educational focus for our residents and faculty.

ACS-AEI Accredited Surgical Simulation Fellowship

Cara Liebert, MD
Dr. Liebert is a General Surgery resident in the Department of Surgery at Stanford and recently completed her PGY-2 year. Prior to entering the Stanford General Surgery Residency program, she attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an undergraduate and earned her M.D. degree from Stanford School of Medicine. She currently serves as the Surgical Education Fellow in the Goodman Simulation Center and is earning a Master of Health Professions Education (MHPE) degree from the University of Illinois-Chicago. She plans to pursue an academic career in General Surgery and surgical education. Her interests encompasses both medical student and resident education with areas of research focus including curriculum development, skills assessment, and surgical simulation.

Laura Mazer, MD
Dr. Mazer is a General Surgery resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, MA. She completed her PGY-3 year before starting as the Surgical Education Fellow at the Goodman Simulation Center. Prior to entering residency, she completed her undergraduate education at the University of Chicago and earned her M.D. from Emory University. She also completed a Master’s of Science in Clinical Research at Emory, with the support of an NIH TL1 grant. She is currently in her first year as the Surgical Education Fellow, and her research interests include resident assessments, curriculum development for graduate medical education, and nontechnical skills training.  

Surgical Innovation and Education Fellow

Vivian de Ruijter, MD
Vivian de Ruijter is a Surgical Education and Innovation Fellow at Stanford University, and earned her MD degree from the Erasmus University in The Netherlands. She performed a research fellowship in Digestive and Minimally Invasive Surgery at the IRCAD in France. During her fellowship in France she had the opportunity to gain valuable knowledge in hybrid minimally invasive strategies and medical device development. Besides working in several medical device related research studies, she developed an educational program named BEST (Business Engineering and Surgical Technologies) cross-pollinating minimally invasive interventional strategies, providing online and onsite courses in surgical innovation for students in medicine, engineering and business. Through these projects Vivian gained vast experience in project management, medical device development, curriculum development, and conducting research studies in animal and human subjects. Her research interest are within the field of surgical education, surgical innovation and emerging technologies.

Julia Park, MD (2012-2013)
Dr. Park has returned to her PGY-3 year in the General Surgery Residency Program in the Department of Surgery at Stanford. Prior to entering medical school at New York Medical College, Dr. Park was involved in research at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.  She pursued her interest in medical education as a Education Fellow for the Department of Surgery here at Stanford for one year.  Dr. Park's current research interest include gender differences in resident evaluations and surgical clinical decision making.

Dana Lin, MD (2011-2013)
Dr. Lin was born and raised in upstate New York and received her medical degree at University at Buffalo School of Medicine. She completed her general surgical residency at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, subspecialty training in endocrine surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as a fellowship in surgical education at Stanford School of Medicine.  She is currently the curriculum director of the Goodman Simulation Center at Stanford, where she is invested in designing and implementing skills curricula for medical students and residents, creating mobile software to enhance surgical training, and conducting research in surgical education.  She also holds a faculty position at the VA Palo Alto where she practices general and endocrine surgery.