International medical education giant and treasured Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIUSOM) colleague Reed G. Williams, Ph.D., died June 20, 2018, at the age of 76.
Dr. Williams was one of the world’s great medical education researchers. After receiving his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Indiana University–Bloomington in 1970, he joined the faculty at SIUSOM in 1974, where he became the founding chair of the Department of Medical Education, serving in that capacity from 1980 to 1987. In 1987, he became the Head of the Department of Medical Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and later the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education, returning to the SIUSOM Department of Surgery in 2000 and retiring in 2014. In retirement, Dr. Williams remained active with the SIUSOM Departments of Surgery and Medical Education. His last academic titles were J. Roland Folse Professor of Surgical Education Emeritus and Emeritus Professor of Medical Education. He was also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Surgery at Indiana University Medical School.
In the 1980s, Dr. Williams collaborated with Howard Barrows, M.D., to bring SIUSOM’s innovations in medical education to international attention. He was instrumental in the development of standardized patient technology and, with Dr. Barrows, developed the nation’s first comprehensive summative clinical examination using only standardized patients. He led the way in using this technology for the assessment of medical students, helping the National Board of Medical Examiners institute a national standardized patient test, the U.S. Medical Licensing Step 2 Clinical Skills Examination, in 2005, which remains in active use today. In 2000, he received the Merrell Flair Award for outstanding contributions to the field of medical education by the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Group on Educational Affairs. In 2006, he received the National Board of Medical Examiners’ John P. Hubbard Award in recognition of his significant contributions to the pursuit of excellence in the field of evaluation in medicine.
Dr. Williams was an international expert in surgical education as well, having developed, evaluated, and disseminated scholarship on operative performance, readiness for practice, and surgical education practice guidelines. He set new standards for research involving the assessment of clinical performance and the assessment of the clinical decision making process. Through this process, he developed tools for the evaluation and improvement of the learner in difficulty. Much of this work was done with his colleagues Gary Dunnington, M.D.; John Mellinger, M.D.; John Shatzer, Ph.D.; and Debra Klamen, M.D., M.H.P.E., among many others.
He mentored dozens of future medical education researchers, all of whom are better scholars for his guidance. While Dr. Williams was of international stature in medical education, he was known for his irrepressible curiosity, his humble nature, his belief in the potential of others, and his willingness to take risks to make leaps forward in the training of physicians. Dr. Williams also was a great supporter and former editorial board member of Teaching and Learning in Medicine, founded by the late Terrill Mast, Ph.D., and Howard Barrows, M.D. Several of his contributions to the literature may be found in past issues of this journal. He will be sorely missed by all of us at SIUSOM, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, and the larger medical education community.