Dr. Justin Chen joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine as an Instructor in June 2022. He was born and raised in New Jersey. As part of the Accelerated BS/MD Program at Drexel University, he completed his Bachelor’s of Science in Biology in 2012 and Medical Degree in 2016. He then moved to St. Louis to complete his internship and residency at Barnes-Jewish Hospital / Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. During his residency, he participated in the Washington University Teaching Physician Pathway where he further investigated the effects of growth-minded training on physician burnout and facilitated an interprofessional transitions of care curriculum for undergraduate medical students. After completing residency, he stayed at Washington University School of Medicine as the Veteran Affairs Chief Resident in Quality and Safety where he grew his passion for teaching and quality improvement. As a patient safety and quality improvement (PSQI) physician, he mentored resident-led quality improvement projects to improve physician handoffs that led to Electronic Shift Handoff Tool currently used at the John Cochran VA Hospital and improved post-liver transplant preventative care by streamlining collaboration between hepatologists and primary care physicians at the St. Louis VA Healthcare system.
As a PSQI educator, he led a curriculum redesign and program evaluation of the VA Patient Safety and Quality Improvement rotation so that its curriculum was grounded in educational pedagogy and instructional design. He continued his passion for education and PSQI as a medical education fellow at Washington University School of Medicine where he completed a Master’s in Health Profession Education at University of Missouri – Kansas City in 2022. During his fellowship he led multiple additional improvements for the VA PSQI rotation including creating a learning management system for the rotation. He also assisted a qualitative study to explore how clinicians describe competent and excellent medical student performance during clinical clerkships and helped develop an online curriculum to promote diversity, equity, and inclusive and curtail microaggressions and mistreatment at Washington University School of Medicine. His current interests include quality improvement, patient safety, and hospital medicine. His educational interests included curriculum development, assessments and evaluation in undergraduate and graduate medical education. During his free time, he enjoys camping, rock-climbing, photography, and tabletop board games.