Holly Caretta-Weyer, MD : 2022 International Medical Educator of the Year Award recipient
Holly Caretta-Weyer, MD, MHPE, is Assistant Program Director and Assistant Medical Education Scholarship Fellowship Director in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. An exceptional medical educator and scholar, her contributions to the development and administration of Stanford’s residency program have made an invaluable contribution. But the impact of her scientific contributions extends far beyond the institution where she works.
Harnessing big data for individual learning
In 2020, Dr. Caretta-Weyer was awarded one of 11 grants from the American Medical Association Reimagining Residency program amid a field of more than 200 applicants. Her research involves creating a rigorously designed learning dashboard that will monitor the expected progression of trainees through residency, serve as a vehicle for self-assessment and provide rich data to guide the work of learning coaches. More than that, by aggregating massive amounts of assessment data, Dr. Caretta-Weyer’s work will enable the design of assessments that benefit individuals learners, their training programs and learning institutions.
As her colleagues have put it, Dr. Caretta’s work will not only endure in its current form; it will provide a foundation for future assessment frameworks to develop and mature. It is no exaggeration that she is reshaping medical training at the infancy of learning analytics.
Strong background as a clinician educator
Dr. Caretta-Weyer is far more than a world-class researcher. As a clinician educator, she is legendary. To provide just one example, during a two-year academic fellowship at Oregon Health and Science University, she redesigned the school’s workplace-based assessment system, developed and implemented a novel model for an undergraduate summative entrustment committee, and fostered responsible competency-based learner handovers from undergraduate to graduate medical education.
She transitioned this work to the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she is the Implementation Lead for the Core EPAs at the School of Medicine and will be the founding chair of the Entrustment Committee—in addition to many other clinician educator roles.
Dr. Caretta-Weyer is a truly exceptional physician educator and medical education scholar whose work is transforming residency education and assessment at Stanford, nationally and internationally. Her research will drive our understanding of the use of big data in medical education and precision assessment well into the future.
