Biography
Chandler Todd received a BA in Religion from Princeton University in 1994. She earned her Doctor of Medicine degree in 1998 from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Following her MD degree she completed a 3 year residency in Pediatrics at Children's Memorial Hospital (Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago), Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Personal Statement
I joined the Department of Pediatrics Faculty at UNM in 2005. Since that time, the focus of my career has been devoted to providing and role modeling excellent patient care and creating excellent clinicians for future generations. My FTE is 0.8 and I divide that time equally between patient care and medical education.
I am the Pediatric Clerkship Director. This is a required 8 week rotation for all graduating medical students, and in this capacity I manage the pediatric education for over 100 third year medical students per year. This includes managing curriculum and lectures, coordinating clinical assignments, supervising evaluations, direct feedback sessions with each student, grading of assignments, and writing summaries for students Dean’s letters. Additionally, I supervise all 4th year students who plan to match in pediatrics. I coordinate with the phase III rotation directors, manage scheduling of department courses, provide individualized match advising for 10-13 students per year, and write Department letters of recommendations for these students. As clerkship director, there have been several innovations that I am especially proud of. These include the “Mind In The Making” Workshop which introduces medical students to the concept of executive skill development in children and connections of these skills to parenting and future physical health; co-collaboration with Deepti Rao, MD and Kathleen Kennedy, MD on the development of a universal assessment tool for Phase II students; and creation of a curriculum map which pairs curriculum from the national pediatric clerkship directors with the exam requirements for the Nation Board of Medical Examiners. Additionally, I serve the department through my work on the Residency Application Committee, Clinical Competency Committee, Promotion and Competency Committee, Remediation Curriculum Committee, Executive Cabinet and as a personal mentor for individual residents.
I am engaged in scholarly projects on the local and national level. I served as a volunteer faculty reviewer for the NBME pediatric subject exam in 2016 and 2019. I was invited to this position because of my work as a clerkship director. I reviewed two full exams’ worth of questions for content, and validity, and applicability to the third year clerkship student. I have also been involved with scholarly projects through the COMSEP Curriculum Committee. The mission of this national group of clerkship directors is “Better Health for All Patients through Pediatric Education.” I was involved with a collaborative project to develop a point-of-care tool / app using illness scripts, to assist in the development of clinical reasoning. This group has produced an app called PedsScripts, and is currently in a secondary review process of this tool. Through my work with COMSEP, I was invited to join a MedU working group to create advanced organizers, short and ultrashort CLIPP cases. MedU is non-profit organization which maintains technology-enhanced learning programs in Pediatrics and seven other fields of medicine. CLIPP cases are the most utilized technology-enhanced learning program in medical education, and are being used at the majority of US and Canadian medical schools. With this working group I wrote and reviewed cases for anemia, bruising, leukemia, HSP, ITP, hemophilia and von Willebrand's disease. At the local and clinical level, I completed 2014-2016 Pediatric Asthma Quality Improvement Initiative with the guidance of Envision New Mexico. I am also member of the UNM Hypertension Working Group. This group has created guidelines for the general pediatrician, sample documentation, and a flow chart to assist in management of pediatric hypertension and appropriate referrals to pediatric nephrologist. The long term plan is for implementation at UNM followed by state wide presentation of the guidelines.
My clinical work is focused on general outpatient pediatrics based in the Urgent Care, my private panel, and resident continuity clinic. I attend in the Newborn Nursery, one week per year. My panel includes many medically fragile children with complex social needs. I am frequently contacted by specialists in hematology, genetics, and cardiology to become the primary care physician for a child who is “falling through the cracks” in the community setting. Additionally, I am the primary care physician for many attending and resident families. I supervise medical students and residents in the majority of my clinical encounters.
Gender
Female