The Clinical Teacher Award honors a career involved in teaching clinical infectious diseases to fellows, residents or medical students and recognizes excellence as a clinician and motivation to teach the next generation.
2023 Winner: Nigar Kirmani, MD, FIDSA
Nigar Kirmani, MD, FIDSA, has helped ensure that infectious diseases fellows can become outstanding clinicians and physician-scientists and that medical student have a solid foundation in clinical ID for more than three decades. She has helped medical students understand that infectious diseases are more than memorizing bugs and drugs, and that an accurate diagnosis requires careful history-taking and physical examination.
A professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Dr. Kirmani has overseen the fellowship training of approximately 100 infectious diseases physicians at Washington University School of Medicine and Loyola University. She led the clinical infectious diseases course for medical students at Washington University School of Medicine for 20 years.
As the ID fellowship program director at Washington University School of Medicine, Dr. Kirmani expanded the program to five fellows per year and added an HIV fellowship at a Veterans Affairs clinic. She developed a weekly core curriculum conference and recruited dozens of faculty experts to teach the series.
Dr. Kirmani introduced diversity and inclusion strategies and established the first wellness program for fellows. Also, Dr. Kirmani developed the weekly HIV core curriculum and reorganized the monthly Journal Club for fellows and the monthly Research Conference for fellows and faculty.
More than 2,500 medical students at Washington University School of Medicine have taken Dr. Kirmani’s infectious disease pathophysiology course. In this course, Dr. Kirmani engaged students through interactive polls and small group case-based faculty-facilitated discussions where students teach each other. Her use of key concept summary slides after each lecture topic was so popular that students requested this in all courses.
The infectious disease pathophysiology course was the top-ranked ID course until the medical school launched its new curriculum in 2020 and retired the course. Dr. Kirmani then became the microbiology and clinical infectious diseases thread leader, ensuring that microbiology and clinical infectious diseases are woven throughout the curriculum.
One of the busiest supervising attendings at Washington University School of Medicine, Dr. Kirmani has also mentored hundreds of fellows and junior faculty. She is a mentor for the IDSA’s Clinician Educator Program and has also served as a mentor in the Scholars Program for junior faculty. She helps junior faculty from medical schools in the U.S. and other countries through career counseling, the development of clinician education portfolios and advice about managing their time and schedules.
Dr. Kirmani has received many awards for her teaching, including the Thread Leader of the Year, the Distinguished Service Teaching Award in Clinical Reasoning and 10 other Distinguished Service Teaching Awards from Washington University School of Medicine. She is a fellow of IDSA.
IDSA is pleased to award Dr. Kirmani the 2023 Clinical Teacher Award for her development of training programs and courses in infectious diseases for fellows, medical students and residents, and for her mentoring of fellows and junior faculty.
Past Clinical Teacher Award Winners
| 2022 | Raymund Razonable, MD, FIDSA |
| 2021 | Carlos Isada, MD |
| 2020 | Carlos Isada, MD |
| 2020 | Stanford T. Shulman, M.D., FIDSA |
| 2019 | William L. Salzer, MD |
| 2018 | Allan R. Tunkel, MD, PhD, FIDSA |
| 2018 | Frank E. Berkowitz, MD, MPH |
| 2017 | Michael J. Barza, MD, FIDSA |
| 2016 | Rashida A. Khakoo, MD, MACP, FIDSA, FSHEA |
| 2015 | Walter R. Wilson, MD, FIDSA |
| 2014 | Nesli Basgoz, MD, FIDSA |
| 2013 | Marvin Turk, MD, FIDSA |
| 2012 | Carol A. Kauffman, MD, FIDSA Sarah S. Long, MD, FIDSA |
| 2011 | Vincent J. Quagliarello, MD, FIDSA |
| 2010 | Adolf W. Karchmer, MD, FIDSA |
| 2009 | Joshua Fierer, MD, FIDSA |
| 2008 | Larry M. Baddour, MD, FIDSA |
| 2007 | Daniel M. Musher, MD, FIDSA |
| 2006 | Hillar Vellend, MD, FIDSA |
| 2005 | John Fisher, MD, FACP |