Mark T. Warner, MD, CMQ

Associate Professor
Director, Pulmonary & Critical Care Fellowship Program
Director, Coronary Care Unit, Heart & Vascular Institute, Memorial Hermann Hospital – Texas Medical Center Campus

Educational Philosophy

I teach for two reasons: the first is that there is no greater sense of accomplishment than seeing a learner mature in front of your eyes and go on to be a teacher and leader in their field and secondly, because I want to emulate the investment that my teachers made in me. My goal over the last seven years, since I joined the faculty in the Division of Critical Care is to be involved in teaching at all levels. There is great joy in teaching medical students, especially preclinical students that are learning about a disease for the first time. I enjoy being able to relate my experience to them and recall patient encounters to give them context to some of the concepts they are learning about. I have always enjoyed the hospital environment because of the richness and unpredictability of the learning. Seeing the light in clinical students’ eyes when you take them to the bedside and show them sick patients, ventilators, and other facets of the modern healthcare system invigorates me. I think, though, the thing that sustains me for the long-term is the challenge of the apprenticeship model of graduate medical education. Teaching residents and fellows the art and science of Medicine as well as the intangible aspects of being a Physician, I feel is a higher calling. I was fortunate to have great role models ahead of me that demonstrated empathy, emotional intelligence and highly effective communication skills and I have personally worked on developing those in my own practice. Being able to model and share humanity, humor and practical education with learners is my favorite thing to do. As I have become a specialist in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, I feel the burden of shaping our fellows to learn both disciplines thoroughly and develop them to be leaders that exhibit the highest ideals of our field. I think there is certainly a place to use multimedia including graphical displays, videos and interactive teaching, but there is something very pure at heart of taking a blank sheet of paper and walking your learners through a conceptual framework and advancing them through complicated topics quickly and watching them grasp the topic and be able to apply it in a clinical context. I feel that our goals of education and clinical care of patients are co-equal and I continue to purse both with dedication.

Areas of Expertise/Interest:

• Bedside teaching, especially in the intensive care unit
• Interactive large group teaching
• Simulation and procedural teaching
• Curriculum development