Dr. William T. Branch, MD, MACP

Dr. William T. Branch, Jr., M.D, MACP attended medical school at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, residency training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School, and national service at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He was founding director of the Primary Care Residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1974. He was a key leader of the New Pathway project at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Branch served as a founding member SGIM, a Council member and SGIM Secretary. He Co-edited the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM) Supplement on the Clinician-Educator. He was the second recipient of SGIM’s National Award for Career Achievements in Medical Education. He co-edited the first JGIM Education Issue. He is a facilitator in the Academy on Communication on Healthcare (ACH) and is a past President of the ACH. He directed the Division of Internal General Medicine at Emory for seventeen years. He more than tripled the size of the Division, and founded a Primary Care Residency Program and a Faculty Development Program for young faculty members. He planned and implemented a required End-Of-Life Course for Emory medical students, and was one of three original Co-directors of Emory’s four year “Being a Doctor” Course. Dr. Branch is an internationally recognized leader and innovator in medical education. He is author of numerous papers published in peer reviewed journals and is the editor of five textbook editions. He is an attending physician on the wards at Grady Memorial Hospital and practices primary care/general internal medicine at The Emory Clinic. Dr. Branch’s current projects include a teaching program in medical humanism for faculty physicians at 30 medical schools, and a federal grant to transform and improve primary care at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Specialties

Internal Medicine

Board Certifications

ABMS Internal Medicine

Fellowships

Harvard Medical School

Affiliations

Emory

Education & Training

Medical School: University of Alabama at Birmingham
Internship: Brigham and Women's Hospital
Residency: Brigham and Women's Hospital

Honors & Awards

1997 National Award for Career Achievements in Medical Education, Society of General Internal Medicine

1998 Master, American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine

2003 Emory University Attending Teaching Award from the Emory Internal Medicine Residency Program

2009 “Twenty+ Years of Dedicated Service to SSGIM” Award, SSGIM

2012 Shanthi V. Sitaraman Silver Pear Mentoring Award-Clinical Faculty, The Emory University Department of Medicine

2013 ACP Georgia Chapter Leadership Award. ACP Georgia Chapter

2013 Lynn Payer Award, American Academy on Communication in Healthcare (AACH)

2018 Distinguished Fellow in Medical Practice, National Academies of Practice. (NAP)

2018 John A. Benson, Jr. Award for best research paper on professionalism, from the ABIM Foundation

Publications

Branch WT Jr, Treating the whole patient: Passing time-honored skills for building patient-doctor relationships on to generations of doctors, Medical Education. 2014; 48: 67-74.

Branch WT Jr, Ethics of an ordinary Doctor, Hastings Center Report. 2014; 44: 15-17.

Branch, WT Jr, Chou C, Farber N, Hatem D, Keenan C, Makoul G, Quinn M, Salazar W, Sillman J, et at, Faculty development to enhance humanistic teaching and role modeling, J Gen Intern Med. 2014; 29:1250-55.

Rider EA, Kurtz S, Slade D, Longmaid HE, Ho MJ, Pun JK, Eggins S, Branch WT, Jr, The international charter for human values in healthcare: An interprofessional global collaboration to enhance values and communication in healthcare, Patient Edu and Couns. 2014; 96: 273-280.

Branch WT Jr, Teaching professional and humanistic values: Suggestion for a practical and theoretical approach, Patient Educ and Counc. 2015; 98: 162-167.https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2014.10.022.

Branch WT Jr. The Ethics of Patient Care, JAMA. 2015; 313: 4121-22.

Bernstein L, Branch WT Jr. Coaching as a Micro-Teaching Skill: Defining a Concept, Medical Encounter, accepted for publication.

Osterberg L, Swigris R, Weil A, Branch WT Jr. The highly influential teacher: Recognizing our unsung heroes. Med Educa. 2015; 49: 1117-23.

Manning K, Abraham C, Kim JS, Branch WT Jr (last author) et al. Preparing the Ground for Interprofessional Education: Getting to know Each Other. J Hum Rehabil. In press.

Branch WT Jr, Frankel R. Not all stories of professional identity formation are the equal: An analysis of formation narratives of highly humanistic physicians. Patient Educ. Cons. (2016), https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2016.03.018

William T. Branch, Jr., MD, and Maura George, MD. Reflection-Based Learning for Professional Ethical Formation. AMA Journal of Ethics. April 2017, Volume 19, Number 4: 349-356

W.T. Branch, Jr., Amy Weil, Lars Osterberg, et al., How physicians draw satisfaction and overcome barriers in their practices: “It sustains me”, Patient Educ Couns. 2017; 100:2320-30, https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2017.06.004

W.T. Branch, Jr., Richard Frankel, Janet P. Hafler, et al. A multi-institutional longitudinal faculty development program in humanism supports the professional development of faculty teachers. Acad Med (2017), doi: 10. 1097/ACM.0000000000001940 (available Online, open access).

E.R. Rider, M. Gilligan, L.G. Osterberg, et al W.T. Branch, Jr. (last author). Healthcare at the Crossroads: The Need to Shape an Organizational Culture of Humanistic Teaching and Practice. J Gen Intern Med. 2018 (accepted for publication)