Denise Connor, MD

Professor of Clinical Medicine

CLINICAL ACTIVITIES:
As a founding member of the San Francisco VA Medical Center’s Faculty Hospital Medicine Group, I attend on a range of inpatient services including our medicine ward service, a traditional teaching service, the Faculty Hospitalist Service, an attending-only service, the Co-Management Service, a consultative service for peri-operative patients, and our Swing Service, where I serve as Transfer Attending, Medicine Consult attending, and Procedure attending, while admitting patients and supporting the on-call team. A significant portion of our clinical care at the SFVA is focused on patients who are facing a myriad of social and structural barriers that impact their health--we work to bring a team-based, interprofessional approach to our partnership with these patients to address both their acute medical needs and upstream determinants of health.

EDUCATIONAL PURSUITS:
My interest in medical education began in my year as a chief resident, and has become the cornerstone of my career. From 2013 through 2020, I served as the Associate Program Director for PRIME, a VA-based Area of Distinction for internal medicine residents offering training in understanding the medical literature, designing clinical research, and expanding clinical skills. In this role, I developed a longitudinal clinical reasoning series and a career series dedicated to building tools for successful academic careers.

As the first theme lead for Clinical Reasoning within the School of Medicine's Clinical Microsystem Clerkship (CMC), and Design Lead and inaugural Director for a capstone course for our pre-clerkship students, the Diagnostic Reasoning (DR) Block (launched in 2017 and served as course director through 2022), I had the opportunity to develop a novel, longitudinal curriculum focused on building foundational skills in clinical reasoning.

I pair my interest in clinical reasoning education with a focus on improving diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism/anti-oppression within medical education. In particular, I am interested in exploring how to bring an anti-oppressive lens to how we teach and practice team-based clinical reasoning, with the patient and their family at the heart of the team. I am currently Director of the School of Medicine’s Anti-Oppression Curriculum Initiative (AOCI). Through this role I am honored to collaborate with faculty, students, staff, and community members to elevate the School of Medicine’s emphasis on justice, equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression across the entire four-year curriculum.

SCHOLARLY INTERESTS:
I am interested in the intersection between communication, diversity, equity, inclusion, and clinical reasoning, as well as how we can bring an anti-oppression lens to medical education. Highlights of my current projects include:

• Considering how traditional, 'cognitive' aspects of reasoning link with relationship-centered communication with patients, and how we incorporate issues of diversity, equity and inclusion when we teach about and engage in clinical reasoning

• Developing approaches and tools to assist with review and adaptation of curricula to move towards anti-racism and anti-oppression in medical education (both in content and pedagogy)