Steve Miller Medical Education Day Highlights Humanism in Medicine

“We must find ways to permeate each and every aspect of medicine with humanism,” wrote Steven Z. Miller, MD, and Hilary J. Schmidt, PhD, in 1999 in Academic Medicine. Those words, and the sentiment behind them, infused every aspect of the work of Dr. Steven Z. Miller, whom Lisa Mellman, MD, senior associate dean for student affairs, once called the "quintessential educator." Dr. Miller was an award-winning and sought-after professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, as well as a much-loved physician. Nine years after his untimely 2004 death in a plane crash, his impact is still apparent, in part through student fellowships and an annual event in his name, the Steve Miller Medical Education Day, presented by the Department of Pediatrics and sponsored by the New York Academy of Medicine and the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.  

On Oct. 25, 2013, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., the fifth annual Steve Miller Medical Education Day will feature workshops, presentations, and grand rounds, titled “The Mindful Practitioner,” presented by Ronald M. Epstein, MD, of the Rochester Medical Center. 

Dr. Miller, a 1980 graduate of Columbia College and 1984 graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, was the Arnold P. Gold Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at P&S and director of pediatric emergency medicine at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. He was honored many times by Columbia for his teaching and was the recipient of the 2001 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, which recognizes the university's best instructors.  

 "He was not only teaching them to be good doctors," John M. Driscoll Jr., MD, the former chair of pediatrics told the New York Times.  "He was teaching them to be compassionate people.''

Read more about Dr. Miller and the launch of the Steve Miller Medical Education Day in a 2009 P&S article.  

Find out more about this year's event.