Andrea Crowell, MD, assistant professor, and Jeffrey Rakofsky, MD, director of medical student education, in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, are recipients of the 2017-18 ABPN Faculty Innovation in Education Award. Given by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Inc. (ABPN), the award is intended to support the development of innovative education and/or evaluation projects that promote effective residency/fellowship training or lifelong learning of practicing psychiatrists and neurologists.

Each year the selection committee chooses up to two psychiatry and two neurology fellows for the two-year fellowship. Each recipient focuses on a project that addresses an important problem or issue in neurology and/or psychiatry education, assessment or practice.

The project Crowell will focus on involves developing an educational tool to teach residents/students how to manage agitated behavior through the use of simulation (actors who portray agitated patients). The simulation training will be evaluated against a video-based case discussion to determine effectiveness, with a goal of packaging the best educational program for use by other programs.

Rakofsky’s project involves development of a computer-generated, standardized, patient-care simulator to assess residents’ psychopharmacology knowledge. The simulator will compare the test performance of psychiatry faculty, senior level psychiatry residents and junior level psychiatry residents to determine validity of the assessment.

"These accolades are well deserved and to have two recipients from the same department, honored in the same year, is exceptional," says Mark Hyman Rapaport, MD, Reunette W. Harris professor and chair of Emory’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.