FIU Educator Spotlight

This award is the result of a combination of students and clerkship directors voting for the physician who has best mentored, instructed, and served as a role model for our students in a preceptor role. This award was given to Dr. Ronald Tolchin last year. Congratulations, Dr. Herskowitz. Thank you for your dedication to teaching our students! Dr. Herskowitz evaluates the patient list and selects patients with interesting findings and tells the students to not look at the chart and to go and see the patients. The students then obtain histories and perform physical examinations. Dr. Herskowitz observes the students in performing parts of the physical examination and listens to their case presentations and gives individualized feedback to the students. We asked Dr. Herskowitz a few questions about his teaching and our students have great things to say about him!

Why do you teach? Dr. Herskowitz: “I love to teach. I love to inspire. I love to give back because I was inspired by the educators that I worked with when I was a student and I want to inspire and give back just as they inspired me and educated me.”

Why do you teach in the way you teach? Dr. Herskowitz: “I want to be very interactive. I tell the students that I’m not going to lecture them. Instead, I make it very interactive. They see a patient and then I ask some questions about the patient and I give them feedback on their histories and physicals.”

What do you love the most about teaching? Dr. Herskowitz: “The part that I love the most about teaching is teaching in real time with patients. It moves teaching from the theoretical into real patient care. That’s what I want the students to think about.”

Students speak highly of Dr. Herskowitz and his teaching skills. Check out these comments from the clerkship evaluations that highlight just how he does it:

“An excellent preceptor to work with. Impressively vast expertise on neurology as a whole. Gave us autonomy to see patients on our own and really learn to work through coming to a differential diagnosis through a focused and detailed history and physical and neurological exam. Took the time to sit down with us and use patient presentations to delve deeply into cases and teach.”

“Dr. Herskowitz allowed each of us to present patient cases and gave us feedback on our physical examination. He very knowledgeable and his experience really comes through.”

“Dr. Herskowitz conducted a very effective inpatient Neurology rotation. The rotation consisted of prerounding on old patients, presenting patients to Dr. Herskowitz, which he would then critique and give advice for future improvement, observing other student presentations, rounding on additional interesting cases, time to independently see patients and write notes. Dr. Herskowitz is a talented teacher. He is very concerned about student learning.”

“Great physician who relates neurology to students’ future careers. Promotes critical thinking.”

“Excellent preceptor. I really enjoyed discussing patients and going to the bedside to examine neurological findings. I also enjoyed the topics we would get to discuss later because it made me look up more things in detail.”

“Dr. Herskowitz is clearly dedicated to teaching students. Truly takes an interest and time to help develop skills and knowledge of students. Easy to communicate with.”

“Dr. Herskowitz was an incredible preceptor to have for neurology. He cares about what the students are learning and wants to foster excitement and interest in the subject matter. I appreciate that he goes through the in-patient list for neurology and picks out interesting/important cases. He allows us to be thorough and spend a lot of time with the patients and stresses that it is better to learn and present one patient very well than take on many patients and learn about them only superficially. I appreciate that he listens to our entire patient presentations. He cares about us practicing this important skill. The morning sessions where we discuss the cases is extremely helpful and often these presentations serve as a conduit to cover many other topics that may or may not be directly related the patient. I feel like I learned in an incredible amount of neurology in such a short rotation. He really helped maximize our time on this clerkship.”

“Dr. H was one of the most engaging preceptors that I have had. He gave us a real sense of agency by assigning patients to see and evaluate in our own.”

Thank you, Dr. Herskowitz for your service in teaching!