Elizabeth Rider

Clinician and Content Expert Faculty,Director of Academic Programs As Director of Academic Programs, Elizabeth creates and directs programs to enhance relational and communication skills and professionalism for healthcare leaders, faculty, trainees, and clinicians. She develops new initiatives and teaches in various Institute programs.

“All interactions in health care take place within relationships and in the conversations between people. Working with the Institute to figure out ways to enhance relationships between clinicians, patients and families, faculty and learners, and among interprofessional colleagues, has been inspiring.”

Elizabeth founded and directs Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School’s first Faculty Education Fellowship in Medical Humanism and Professionalism and the first Faculty Fellowship for Leaders in Humanistic Interprofessional Education. An Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School (HMS), Elizabeth is a Harvard Macy Institute Scholar and Faculty for the Program for Educators in the Health Professions. At HMS, she was Coordinator of Faculty Development, Resident as Teacher Initiative, and faculty for the Patient-Doctor III course for many years. Elizabeth and colleagues implemented communication skills assessment across the HMS curriculum.

In 2009, Elizabeth was named Community Pediatrician of the Year by Boston Children’s Hospital. In 2012 she received the National Academies of Practice’s Nicholas Cummings Award for “extraordinary contributions to interprofessional healthcare education and practice”. In 2016, she was awarded the Platinum Award for Excellence in Person-Centered Care by the European Society for Person Centered Healthcare (ESPCH).

Elizabeth has received various teaching awards including the Morgan–Zinsser Fellow in Medical Education Award at Harvard Medical School, Priscilla and Richard Hunt Fellowship Award of the Eleanor and Miles Shore 50th Anniversary Program for Scholars in Medicine, the Medical Educator Award for Innovative Scholarship in Medical Education (with 3 IPEP colleagues) from The Academy for Innovation in Education at Boston Children’s Hospital, and others.

Elizabeth is Vice President, Partnerships and Networking, immediate past Chair of the Medicine Academy, and a Carlton Horbelt Senior Fellow of the National Academies of Practice. She has served on the boards of various non-profit healthcare organizations including the Board of Directors of the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare for 12 years, and on the National Board of Medical Examiners’ Communication Skills Task Force.

Elizabeth was appointed to the Global Compassion Council of Charter for Compassion International in 2014, and she is chair of the external advisory board and a founding member of the Institute for Communication in Healthcare (formerly the International Research Centre for Communication in Healthcare), now at Australian National University. She leads the International Charter for Human Values in Healthcare initiative, a collaborative global effort of people, organizations and institutions working to restore attention to core values in healthcare.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Elizabeth completed her pediatric residency at Boston Children’s Hospital, and fellowship in general academic pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital. She also holds a master’s degree in clinical social work from Smith College, and brings her dual background as a physician and child and family therapist to her leadership, teaching and clinical roles.

Elizabeth teaches and consults internationally on relationship-centered care, communication skills, professionalism, reflective practice, ‘everyday ethics’, enhancement of relational competency in learners at all levels, use of narrative, and medical and interprofessional education and curriculum development. She has been an invited speaker in various countries including Taiwan, where she was asked by the Education Ministry to teach leaders from Taiwan’s 11 medical schools about integrating communication and relational skills into medical education curricula. She is an Associate Editor for Patient Education and Counseling, and lead author of the book A Practical Guide to Teaching and Assessing the ACGME Core Competencies (2007 & 2010).

Selected publications:

Branch WT Jr, Weil AB, Gilligan MC, Litzelman DK, Hafler JP, Plews-Ogan M, Rider EA, Osterberg LG, Dunne D, Derse AR, Pittman JR, Frankel RM. How physicians draw satisfaction and overcome barriers in their practices: “It sustains me”. Patient Education and Counseling 2017;100(12):2320-2330.

Branch WT Jr, Frankel RM, Hafler JP, Weil AB, Gilligan MC, Litzelman DK, Plews-Ogan M, Rider EA, Osterberg LG, Dunne D, Derse AR, May NB. A multi-institutional longitudinal faculty development program in humanism supports the professional development of faculty teachers. Academic Medicine. 2017 Dec 1;92(12):1680-6.

Brown SD, Rider EA, Jamieson K, Meyer EC, Callahan MJ, DeBenedectis C, Bixby SD, Walters M, Forman SF, Varrin PH, Forbes P, Roussin CJ. Development of a Standardized Kalamazoo Communication Skills Assessment Tool for Radiologists (KalRad): Validation, Multisource Reliability, and Lessons Learned. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2017 Aug; 209(2):351-357.

Amaral ABCN, Rider EA, Lajolo PP, Tone LG, Pinto RMC, Lajolo MP, Calhoun AW. Development of a Brazilian Portuguese adapted version of the Gap-Kalamazoo communication skills assessment form. International Journal of Medical Education. 2016;7:400-405. doi:10.5116/ijme.583a.df42.

Rider EA, Kurtz S, Slade D, Longmaid III HE, Ho M-J, Pun Kwok Hung J, Eggins S, Branch Jr WT. The International Charter for Human Values in Healthcare: An interprofessional global collaboration to enhance values and communication in healthcare. Patient Education and Counseling 2014;96:273-280. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2014.06.017

Peterson EB, Calhoun AW, Rider EA. The reliability of a modified Kalamazoo Consensus Statement Checklist for assessing the communication skills of multidisciplinary clinicians in the simulated environment. Patient Education and Counseling 2014;93:411-418. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2014.07.013

Rider, EA. Advanced communication in pediatrics: Strategies for relationship-centered care. Pediatric Annals 2011 Sept; 40(9): 447-453.

Rider EA, Nawotniak RH. A Practical Guide to Teaching and Assessing the ACGME Core Competencies, Second Edition. Marblehead, MA: HCPro, Inc. (2010). 394 pages. [Book]

Rider EA, Volkan K, Hafler JP. Pediatric residents’ perceptions of communication competencies: Implications for teaching. Medical Teacher 2008; 30(7):e208-17.

Rider EA, Keefer CH. Communication skills competencies: Definitions and a teaching toolbox. Medical Education 2006 Jul; 40(7):624-9.