We’ve talked to SPs, we’ve talked to PETAs, and even trainers SP Trainers but today we go one step further into the chain of learning - dun dun dunnnnn! This week we talk to Guest Mary Donovan the Assistant Dean for Standardized Patients & Experiential Learning at Georgetown University. We discuss with Mary her career journey, just what a Dean does for a SIM Center, and dive deeper into the genesis of SP Cases.

Mary Donovan is the Assistant Dean for Standardized Patients & Experiential Learning.  She has served at Georgetown as administrative director and educator for the Integrated Learning Center since 2007, providing SOM students with clinical learning and assessment opportunities through the methodologies of SP education and simulation.  Prior to Georgetown, she served as faculty instructor and senior SP trainer at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and academic-affairs staff at Johns Hopkins Medical School.  Prior to her work in med-ed experiential learning, she managed a forum of women in international trade and diplomacy, taught as adjunct faculty on Georgetown’s main campus in the mid-90s, served as marketing manager for a B2B organization, and as chapter liaison for a national trade association. In the early days of online journal search and retrieval, she worked as a researcher at the National Library of Medicine, Library of Congress and other libraries. While in college and beyond, she worked for the UVa Hospital Education system, teaching children from birth to age 21.

Mary presented (virtually) at the Ottawa Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as a finalist for the IMU-RHIME Award for Innovation in March of 2020, and won an innovation award for her presentation at the international Association for Standardized Patient Educators in 2011. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Health Design, based in Melbourne, Australia.  From 2016-18 she served as Chair for the Mid-Atlantic Consortium of med-school clinical-skills programs.  In 2016, GUMC honored her as a “bridge-builder” in the Ongoing Engagement and Consultation initiative. In June of 2023, she will co-present a session on challenges for med-students with disabilities at the International Association of Medical Science Educators' annual conference.

She received her BA in English from University of Virginia, MA in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University and MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Mary recently portrayed a palliative-care doctor in an in-house NIH training video for palliative fellows (along with some familiar SP talents). She is thrilled to have become a Great-Aunt Mary a few weeks ago, to twins Arthur and Eva in Louisville. 

Please check out Mary’s blog Muffin, None the Wiser she started during the pandemic!

Instagram | @maryfdonz
Facebook | Mary Donovan
LinkedIn | Mary Donovan
Blog: Muffin, None the Wiser | https://www.marymuffindonovan.com/