Rate My Professor Alan Dow

Alan Dow, M.D., MSHA, is the Ruth and Seymour Perlin Tenured Professor of Medicine and Health Administration and serves as Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. He founded the hospitalist group at VCU Health System in 2004 and initially led it before transitioning to key administrative roles, including Assistant Vice President of Health Sciences for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Care and Assistant Dean. In January 2021, Dow returned to lead the Division of Hospital Medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic. He earned his M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine and completed his internal medicine residency and Master of Science in Health Administration at VCU. Currently, he is also President and CEO of UHS Professional Education Programs, Inc., which produces and credits thousands of hours of continuing education programs each year.

Dow is an award-winning educator, having received the VCU School of Medicine’s Enrique Gerszten, M.D. Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, the school’s highest teaching honor, and VCU’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the university’s highest teaching award. He was selected as a 2011 Macy Faculty Scholar by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. His scholarship focuses on interprofessional education, communication and teamwork in healthcare, patient safety, healthcare quality improvement, mindfulness training for professionals, telemedicine adoption, and learning health systems. Dow employs qualitative, mixed-methods, simulation-based, and network analysis approaches to develop and evaluate innovative programs that address practice and community needs. Key publications include “Teamwork on the rocks: Rethinking interprofessional practice simulations” (2017), “Things We Do for No Reason™: Race adjustments in eGFR calculations” (2022), “Using Virtual Reality to Teach Medical Students Cross-Cultural Communication” (2024), and “Patient care in complex Sociotechnological ecosystems and learning health systems” (2024). With 1,853 citations documented on ResearchGate, his contributions have advanced collaborative care and medical education at VCU and beyond.