Gillian Heinecke, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor, SSM Health/Saint Louis University, has been named the American Board of Dermatology’s first ABMS Visiting Scholar. Dr. Gillian is one of 13 scholars selected to participate in the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Visiting Scholars Program.
Dr. Heinecke is an assistant professor in the Department of Dermatology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, where she is the associate director of the residency program. She treats patients who have skin cancer, psoriasis, eczema, complex medical skin conditions, acne, and warts. She is certified in Dermatology and in Dermatopathology and is participating in the ABD’s Continuing Certification Program (CCP).
Established in 2014, the one-year, part-time Visiting Scholars Program supports early-career physicians and researchers in scholarship and leadership development, focusing on initial and continuing board certification. Each Visiting Scholar receives a $15,000 financial award.
Dr. Heinecke will explore the value of the BASIC Exam (which is administered at the end of the first year of dermatology training) to predict residents’ future performance on CORE Exam modules and the APPLIED Exam. Also, she will assess current attitudes toward the Basic Exam performance and whether training programs are initiating interventions at minimum Basic Exam score thresholds.
“We believe this work by Dr. Heinecke will help to provide guidance to residents, program directors, mentors, and programs on how to use the BASIC Exam score data in the future,” says Erik Stratman, MD, ABD Associate Executive Director for Continuous Program Improvement and Research. “It may also identify models of successful program intervention to improve a resident who didn’t perform particularly well on the initial low-stakes BASIC Exam but subsequently passed the CORE Exam modules and APPLIED Exam. This meets one of the board’s current strategic plan initiatives to partner with programs, program directors, and trainees to share information about ABD.”
ABMS Visiting Scholars are selected based on the quality of their proposed research project, the relevance of their research to the ABMS mission and the certification community, and demonstration of making significant progress on the project during the scholar year. Program participants remain at their home institutions, collaborate with self-selected mentors, and participate in monthly virtual sessions with research project-in-progress updates to peers, mentors, and subject matter experts.
Learn more about the ABMS Visiting Scholars Program here. See the ABMS news release for a list of the other 2023-24 Visiting Scholars and their co-sponsoring organizations.
Gillian Heinecke, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor, SSM Health/Saint Louis University, has been named the American Board of Dermatology’s first ABMS Visiting Scholar.