2009 Mid-Career Faculty Achievement Award Winner:
J. William Kerns, MD
Shenandoah Valley Family
Practice Residency
Virginia Commonwealth University
140 W. 11th Street
Front Royal, Virginia 22630
bkerns@valleyhealthlink.com
Dr. J. William (Bill) Kerns studied molecular biophysics at Yale University, graduated from the University of Virginia Medical School, and completed Family Medicine Residency at Eastern Virginia Medical School before starting in solo family practice in an underserved county in Virginia. The practice grew rapidly in patients and clinical and support staff. Dr. Kerns‟ service included multiple community groups as well as migrant and free clinics, and leadership roles for his county hospital and local and regional medical societies. As medical students and residents came through, he found himself driving 90 miles on his afternoons „off‟ to supervise residents in Fairfax, Virginia. When the local hospital system decided to develop a family medicine residency, Dr. Kerns and all of his partners volunteered, and the Shenandoah Valley Family Practice Residency became embedded in their (still) private practice. He and his partners completed faculty development fellowships at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) as a director and residents were being recruited, and as their practice continued to grow. He has led the quality initiatives in his private practice, and still spends 55% of his time in clinical care.
Although focused on residency education, Dr. Kerns was residency student coordinator for 10 years, and helped develop rural-track program rotational programs for VCU, University of Virginia (UVA), and Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine students in the northern Shenandoah Valley. His residency responsibilities include all aspects of Evidence Based Medicine for the residency, and his multiple presentations and workshops, full of sound bites, music, and pictures, still manage to keep (most) residents awake, even as he ensures that all of them publish and peer review scholarly activity. He has developed and currently coordinates family medicine resident scholarly presentations for the Virginia Academy of Family Practice.
Just after the residency launched, he became a member of the VCU Department of Family Medicine research team, contributing regularly to their grant development, papers and presentations (particularly at North American Primary Care Research Group conferences) and has moderated their organizational retreats. His latest research interests have been in qualitative looks at patients use of personal health records, and he finds himself currently taking course work in qualitative research in the Graduate School of Nursing (which his wife Christine, a nurse, says can only improve him) at UVA.
Christine now helps with his research much like she partnered to start the solo practice, but has her own educational pursuits in training nursing students. They are proud to have parented two fine daughters, and draw much energy from them and their families.
Congratulations, Dr. Kerns! |
