In His Own Words

Date: February 1, 2013

Nichols points to the creation of the Genes to Society curriculum as his greatest accomplishment.

Physician. Author. Professor. Administrator. Innovator. And as many have said, visionary. But as David Nichols prepares to leave the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine after an extraordinary career spanning some 28 years of service, the term he would choose to describe himself is “mentor.”

“Throughout my career, I’ve stuck to the principle of training people who could succeed me in the role I held,” he says. “I’ve always judged my impact in a position by the standard of how many people I have mentored who could replace me.

“My own style has evolved out of my interaction with my own mentors in learning medicine through the Socratic approach. It’s very helpful to engage in a conversation where the learner can experience the discovery of knowledge, particularly when it’s focused at the bedside around a particular patient.  It’s also more exciting for the teacher than simply to lecture and spout out facts.”

Leaders in Their Own Right

From 1984 to 2000, Nichols mentored literally hundreds of medical students, residents, and post-doctoral fellows at Johns Hopkins, first as the associate director of the residency education program in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, and then as director of the Division of Pediatric Critical Care and of the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), which later merged with pediatric anesthesiology.  “When I look back at that time,” he recalls, “I think we were able to train first-rate fellows and ultimately practitioners of pediatric critical care medicine who are now leaders in their own right.”

Then in 2000, the second half of Nichols’ career at Johns Hopkins began all at once, when then-Dean of the Medical Faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Edward D. Miller, offered him the position of Vice Dean for Education at the medical school. “His offer was a complete surprise to me,” says Nichols.  “It was not originally my career objective, but I realized how much potential there was in this role. In many ways, it was a natural extension of my educational activities to date.”

A New Model for Learning

Of his achievements during his 12-year tenure as Vice Dean, Nichols points to the implementation in 2009 of the new School of Medicine curriculum, Genes to Society, as his greatest accomplishment. Through a six-year process of intensive study and conversation led by Nichols, a new model for learning emerged, one that focuses on the individual patient through a cross-disciplinary perspective that accounts for a range of factors, from genetics to social environment.

“Patients don’t present to you the contributing factors of their illness in neat silos—their environmental or dietary habits as well as their genetic predisposition,” he says. “This knowledge is not resident within one discipline or one department but is contained within Johns Hopkins as a whole. Our ultimate goal through Genes to Society was to bring all of the resources of this incredible institution to bear to get the experts from many departments and schools to collaborate on how to present this knowledge in a meaningful way—one that clarifies the range of connections that factor into a patient’s condition.”

Global Reach

Nichols also has played an instrumental role in exporting the new curriculum to a much broader set of students through international collaborations such as the Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine in Malaysia, which employs the Genes to Society curricular approach. “The whole world is at a point where patient health is very much dependent on having outstanding, well-trained physicians—physicians who are able to incorporate the important advances in biomedical science with an understanding of the individual patient’s societal and environmental contexts,” he notes. “If doctors around the world could have a full understanding of these components, they would be able to support patients more effectively.  Hopkins is a vehicle for accomplishing that.”

In reviewing his Hopkins years, Nichols still prefers to look to the prospects ahead. “It’s been a journey, but there is no end to what needs to be accomplished here at Hopkins in the future,” he says.  “I feel like I have met the goals that have evolved over the years, but great opportunities for leadership in medical education are still before us.  My successor won’t be bored!”  —David Beaudouin

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“David has transformed education here at Hopkins, because of the way he always focused on the fundamental importance of our mission. As Vice Dean of Education, he always reminded us that what we’re ultimately doing in education has relevance to patient care. Our real metric is whether we take better care of patients.”

- Michael A. Barone
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

“Early in my career, David once asked me how would I want my grandchildren to remember me. It was one of those questions that made you stop and look at the bigger picture. As a clinician, he always has inspired his residents and post-doc fellows to be the best they can be, to think beyond the walls they are putting up for themselves.”

- Elizabeth Hunt
Assistant Professor, Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine
Director, Simulation Center, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

“Dr. Nichols always has acted from a position of integrity. Early on, he set a goal to make the School of Medicine more inclusive. In an average MD/PhD program elsewhere, you might find two or three underrepresented minority students out of a class of 120. But in my class at Hopkins, there were 13 of us.”

- C. Rory Goodwin
Assistant Resident, Neurological Surgery, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Former National President, Student National Medical Association

“David saw an opportunity in the convergence of our new curriculum with the growing globalization of education—that was all his vision. As he has said, for Genes to Society to be the right answer for medical education, this has to be as true in Asia as it is in Baltimore. Malaysia was the chance for Hopkins to do something positive in a part of the world that was asking for new ideas. So far, it’s been a huge success.”

- Charles Wiener
Founding Dean/CEO, Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine
Professor of Medicine and Physiology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine