About Us

The name CLOSLER is a melding of the words “closer to Osler,” a tribute to Dr. William Osler, a true champion of experiential education and lifelong learning. Osler is most remembered for revolutionizing formal medical education by teaching at the bedside, and emphasizing that all clinical education should begin and end with the patient.

The MCACE was created in 2006 with a generous gift from Sarah Miller Coulson and Frank L. Coulson to support the pursuit of clinical excellence at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine through the Johns Hopkins Center for Innovative Medicine.

Four physicians (Drs. Christmas, Durso, Kravet, and Wright) worked with many to define clinical excellence, develop a systematic means of measuring it, and to then launch the Academy. Beyond recognizing and rewarding clinicians providing outstanding patient care, the Academy's 70+ members collaborate on programs to advance excellence in patient care at Hopkins and beyond.

As described in our publication in the September 2008 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, clinically excellent physicians have achieved a level of mastery in communication and interpersonal skills, professionalism and humanism, and negotiation of the healthcare system. These physicians are exemplary with respect to diagnostic acumen, knowledge, and the scholarly approach to clinical practice. Above all, they exhibit a passion for patient care, and explicitly model all of the above to medical trainees and others around them.

We've organized CLOSLER around this definition of clinical excellence. On our homepage, you'll see separate tabs for articles related to Connecting with Patients, Clinical Reasoning, Passion in the Medical Profession, and Lifelong Learning in Clinical Excellence.