UC San Francisco educator and clinician David Elkin, MD, MSL, has been honored with his third Maxine Papadakis Award for Faculty Professionalism and Respect by the UCSF School of Medicine. He received the honor—a special lifetime achievement award in recognition of his 35 years as an exemplar in treating students and all others in the clinical environment with professionalism, courtesy, and respect—during the school's annual teaching awards ceremony on Oct. 29, 2024.
As a health sciences professor based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG), Elkin has coordinated and taught countless courses since joining the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences as a faculty member in 1989, including core didactics and a humanities seminar focused on professionalism and ethics. He is the co-coordinator for medical student education and co-director of the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service at ZSFG. He has also been deeply involved with the hospital's physician well-being and ethics committees, and served as a physician sponsor for the UCSF Schwarz Rounds, a multidisciplinary forum which gives health care providers the opportunity to discuss the social and emotional issues they face in caring for patients and families. Elkin previously received the Maxine Papadakis Award in 2017 and 2020, and he was also recognized in 2009 with the UCSF Osler Distinguished Teaching Award.
The award is named in honor of Professor Emeritus Maxine Papadakis, MD, who served as the School of Medicine's associate dean for students from 1998 to 2016. During her tenure, Papadakis devoted considerable effort to measuring and improving the professionalism and respectful behavior of faculty in the learning environment, publishing widely in this area, and receiving national recognition for her work. The award was created to celebrate faculty teachers in the core clinical rotations who significantly impact the clinical learning climate for students and advance UCSF values in education.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a focus on providing unparalleled patient care, conducting impactful research, training the next generation of behavioral health leaders, and advancing diversity, health equity, and community across the field.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Health medical centers and community hospitals across San Francisco; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
