Heather E Harrell, MD, FACP

Heather E. Harrell, MD, FACP is Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean of Medical Education at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is a board-certified general internist who earned her BA, BS, and MD with honors from the University of Florida where she received numerous awards including election to the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society during the junior year and the John Gorrie Award for the “best all-around student showing promise of becoming a practitioner of the highest type”. She trained in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and completed the Master Educators of Medical Education Program at the University of Florida. She maintains an active clinical practice and was recognized as a Master Clinician by the Department of Medicine and voted into Best Doctors in America yearly since 2007.

She is an active teacher in all 4 years of the medical curriculum and has been recognized as one of the College of Medicine’s exemplary teachers every year she has been eligible. She is a member of College of Medicine’s prestigious Society of Teaching Scholars; she is in the Chapman Chapter of the Gold Humanism Society and is an Outstanding Young Alumna of the University of Florida. Under her leadership as clerkship director, the Department of Medicine won the Golden Apple for best clinical clerkship seven times. She was honored with a Lifetime Mentor Award from her department. In 2020 she became the Associate Dean for Medical Education.

Dr. Harrell has substantial experience in curriculum design, implementation, and assessment both at the local and national level. She co-chaired the APDIM/CDIM Residents as Teachers Task Force, which developed and disseminated a curriculum for program directors. She initiated one of the first programs in the country that successfully incorporated portfolios into the clinical years. She was awarded the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine Louis N. Pangaro, MD Educational Program Development Award for this work. More recently her focus has shifted to teaching high value care to medical students. She helped create a national curriculum sponsored by the ACP, AAIM, and MedU (Aquifer) in high value care. She is currently Senior Director of the Aquifer High Value Care interdisciplinary virtual patient course. She is active in many professional organizations and is past-president of the Clerkship Directors of Internal Medicine.