News

Jamshid Shirani, MD, director of the general cardiology fellowship program at St. Luke’s University Health Network, has been selected to receive the prestigious Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

Shirani will be honored at ACGME’s annual meeting to be held in Orlando, Florida, in March 2018. He was selected from more than 250 nominations.

The Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award is given to a Program Director who demonstrates ongoing innovation in medical education as well as successful programmatic outcomes.

“This is a monumental award for Dr. Shirani, recognizing his dedication to our cardiology fellowship and especially to his fellows and our students and residents who may rotate on his service,” said Joel Rosenfeld, MD, Chief Academic Officer for St. Luke’s University Health Network. “This is just another testament to the high quality of our St. Luke's educational programs.”

Shirani was a finalist for the award in 2008. He also was awarded a certificate of recognition from the American Medical Group Association (AMGA) in 2008 (Marvin R. Dunn Poster Session) for his work in reinventing the learning environment.

Shirani has been a program director for more than 20 years, joining St. Luke’s in 2008. He was recruited to help launch and direct the general cardiology fellowship program. An additional program in interventional cardiology was added in 2015.

Also, St. Luke’s cardiology fellow Srilakshmy Vallabhaneni, MD, will receive the David C. Leach award. The ACGME gives this award to honor residents, fellows, and resident/fellow teams and their contributions to graduate medical education.

Media Contact:

Sam Kennedy, Corporate Communications Director, 484-526-4134, samuel.kennedy@sluhn.org

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network providing services at seven hospitals and more than 270 outpatient sites in the greater Lehigh Valley. The network’s service area includes 10 counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon, Schuylkill, Bucks, Montgomery, Berks and Monroe counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey.  In partnership with Temple University, St. Luke’s created the region’s first and only regional medical school campus. Dedicated to advancing health education, St. Luke’s operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing and 23 graduate medical educational programs and is considered a major teaching hospital – the only one in its region. Repeatedly, including 2017, St. Luke’s earned Truven’s 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital and 50 Top Cardiovascular Program designations, in addition to other honors for clinical excellence. St. Luke’s is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of St. Luke’s information technology applications such as electronic medical records, telehealth, online scheduling and pricing information. St. Luke’s is also recognized as one of the state’s lowest cost providers.