Brian Garibaldi, MD, MEHP, professor of Medicine and of Physiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Biocontainment Unit (BCU), has been named the Charles Horace Mayo Professor of Medicine and the inaugural director of the new Center for Bedside Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, effective September 1.
“There is an urgent need to reimagine the modern clinical encounter to ensure that it meets the needs of patients, clinicians and healthcare systems. This brings with it an equally urgent need to redesign the way that we teach and assess clinical skills,” Garibaldi said. “The Center for Bedside Medicine will lead a revitalization of the clinical encounter by combining traditional elements of the bedside interaction – history taking, physical exam, clinical reasoning, and more – with cutting edge technology, including point-of-care devices and artificial intelligence.”
He will join Feinberg as professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care and of Medical Education.
“I am incredibly excited to join the talented and passionate team at Northwestern. Together, we can redefine the 21st century clinical encounter and improve the lives of our patients, clinicians and learners,” Garibaldi said.
An accomplished clinical educator, Garibaldi is a nationally recognized leader in innovative bedside teaching methods and a distinguished physician-scientist with expertise in clinical skills assessment, high-consequence pathogens, pandemic preparedness and COVID-19.
In addition to his role at the Hopkins BCU, Garibaldi is associate program director of the Osler Medical Residency Program, where he leads bedside clinical skills training and assessment. He also serves on the board of directors of, co-founded and was the inaugural co-president of the Society of Bedside Medicine.
“We are thrilled that Brian will bring his exceptional talent in bedside diagnosis and teaching to Feinberg. Medicine is advancing rapidly, but the foundational skills of diagnosis using history taking and examination remain critical, not only because of knowledge conveyed, but also because of the connection the physician establishes with the patient in this setting – something that is becoming increasingly challenging with the rapid pace of medicine. Brian will bring a modern approach to this work, incorporating emerging technology, and our faculty, trainees and students will all benefit,” said Marianne Green, MD, vice dean for Education and the Raymond H. Curry, MD, Professor of Medical Education. “Additionally, Chicago, a national hub for medical education, is an ideal destination to centrally convene thought leaders to advance Brian’s work to redesign the clinical encounter.”
Under Garibaldi’s leadership at Northwestern, the new center will aim to elevate Feinberg as a national leader in clinical skills education, assessment and innovation and conduct research to improve the medical training environment to optimize clinical skills and professional fulfillment for clinicians at all levels of training and across multiple disciplines.
The center will also develop continuing medical education (CME) on clinical skills training and assessment delivered in partnership with the Society of Bedside Medicine. It will aim to enhance education and training throughout the medical education lifecycle.
“We are thrilled that Dr. Garibaldi will be joining the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care in the Department of Medicine. In the rapidly changing healthcare setting, excellence in clinical skills remains central to train the next generation of exceptional physicians – a major pillar of the department’s mission,” said Susan Quaggin, MD, the Irving S. Cutter Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine and director of the Feinberg Cardiovascular and Renal Research Institute.
Garibaldi earned his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2004 and completed his internship, residency and chief residency in Medicine and fellowships in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Hopkins, where he has served on the faculty since 2012. While there, he also earned a Master of Education in the Health Professions (MEHP) in 2018.
During his faculty tenure at Hopkins, Garibaldi has taken on a number of wide-ranging leadership roles. As part of the American Medical Association’s Reimagining Residency Initiative, he currently leads a multicenter team exploring factors that impact resident clinical skills and professional development, the Graduate Medical Education Laboratory, which found that clinicians in the hospital today spend only about 13 percent of their time in direct contact with patients and their families.
He was instrumental in creating the Hopkins BCU – one of only 13 federally-funded special pathogens treatment centers – which worked closely with the U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) to create a National Special Pathogens System. He was the clinical lead for the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, which was named a Time Magazine Invention of the Year as the “Go-to Data Source of 2020.”
He is the director of the Johns Hopkins Precision Medicine Center of Excellence (PMCOE) for COVID-19, which is dedicated to understanding the pathobiology of COVID-19 and the impact of therapeutics on disease outcome. One of the key findings of the COVID PMCOE is that pulse oximeters underestimated hypoxemia in Black and Hispanic patients during the pandemic, and that skin pigmentation likely plays an important role in racial disparities in pulse oximeter performance. When the president of the United States became ill with COVID-19 in October 2020, Garibaldi served as a member of the care team at Walter Reed Medical Center and the White House.
Garibaldi has served as author or co-author on more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and serves as principal investigator or co-investigator on numerous federal and extramural grants. He grew up in New York City and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in biological anthropology. Prior to attending medical school, he spent a year in Spain studying flamenco and classical guitar as part of the John Finley Fellowship from Harvard College. He is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the American College of Physicians. He was the inaugural recipient of the Jeremiah A. Barondess fellowship in the clinical transaction from the New York Academy of Medicine and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 2016 and is also a member of the Miller-Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence at Johns Hopkins.
