A local doctor has received an honor from the Department of Veterans Affairs for her innovations in education.

Dr. Deborah DiNardo, 38, the director of women’s health at VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System and a resident of O’Hara, was awarded the VA’s 2020 David M. Worthen Rising Star Award.

The national award is given annually to an early-career professional for excellence in health professions education.

Dr. DiNardo, who earned her MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and her MS in medical education from the University of Pittsburgh, gained recognition for her work in educating medical students in medical reasoning and diagnostics.

She has developed a number of programs, from conferences to webinars, concentrating on teaching deliberate clinical reasoning.

In essence, clinical reasoning is a series of cognitive processes that involve taking all of the information taught in medical school and successfully applying it to individual patients and diagnoses.

It might sound simple, but teaching clinical reasoning as its own skill, instead of as a skill gained over time and practice, is a recent development. It has only begun to gain recognition in the past decade or so.

A 2015 report from the National Academy of Medicine states that diagnostic errors are a major cause of negative outcomes for patients, and that teaching more deliberate reasoning can go a long way in reducing these errors.

The education field of reducing clinical errors through reasoning is exploding in popularity, and DiNardo is a local and national leader in this field. She began a career-long interest in the subject while obtaining her master’s degree at Pitt. Her master’s project was focused on the topic.

“During my training, I learned more about the incidence and impact of diagnostic error and the important impacts on patient care,” DiNardo said. “As a result, I became interested in developing training programs that focus on improving medical decision-making skills.”

She said that clinical reasoning has a major impact on improving patient care. “Clinical reasoning is at the heart of what we do as healthcare providers every day.”

DiNardo also wanted to emphasize the importance of her time at Pitt and her other colleagues and educators.

“I would also like to acknowledge the support and collaboration of colleagues through the UPMC Clinical Center for Medical Decision Making,” she said. She added that she is also grateful for the role the VA has played in her career trajectory.

Working with the Department of Veterans Affairs has had a big impact on DiNardo, both as a practicing physician and as an educator.

“I was fortunate to be assigned to the Pittsburgh VA for my primary care clinic site during my Internal Medicine residency training,” she said, noting how mission-driven and dedicated the staff were, especially when it came to caring for their patients who are veterans. “Working in this setting brought a tremendous sense of purpose to my every day.”

The decision to join the VA after her residency as a primary care provider, a women’s health care provider and an educator was an easy one, she said.

“The VA is also a tremendous place to be an educator. Both on a local and on a national level, the VA has dedicated incredible resources to support its educational mission,” DiNardo said.

The David M. Worthen Rising Star Award is one of three awards given annually by the Department of Veterans Affairs for health professions education. The awards program was established in 1988 and takes its name from a former inspirational leader of the VA’s educational programs, the late David M. Worthen.

DiNardo and her colleagues already are seeing great results with their educational programs, both locally and nationally. Trainees from these programs are applying and using the concepts they’ve learned in a variety of ways, from clinical settings to their own educational experiences.

She and her colleagues also have an education leadership committee, led by medical residents, who have come up with more innovative ideas for teaching clinical reasoning.

“’Pitt Puzzles,’ a resident-developed and delivered set of online interactive cases, has contributed to clinical reasoning education both here in Pittsburgh and across the country,” she said.

Students who participate in their online curriculum are more likely to demonstrate understanding of clinical reasoning and vocabulary for practical purposes, like in patient admission notes.

All of these successes, and the recognition from the national VA, bode well for a bright future for DiNardo, her collaborators and their educational endeavors. They are always working to improve and expand access to their curriculum, especially online.

“We also hope to continue to expand training across learner levels, from early medical student to practicing clinician and faculty,” DiNardo said.

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