Assistant Professor

Department: Pediatrics and Internal Medicine

Being a residency program director is a hard job. You have a small village of trainees looking to you for guidance to develop their clinical, research, service, and administrative skills. While working very hard, they have personal lives, with both challenges and reasons to celebrate, that affect their training. As Director, you need to assure that the program is meeting their needs, as well as multiple levels of accreditation requirements and workplace requirements for multiple training sites. The landscape is constantly changing. While guiding more senior residents through options for continued training or moving to practice, you are already working on filling the next class of internship residency slots. Oh, and you also have a personal life and maybe two or three other jobs you are doing simultaneously.

Think about doing this for a highly competitive program combining two specialties with separate requirements and diverse educational needs - and - being highly successful at it! This is what David J. Friedel, M.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Internal Medicine, is accomplishing every day as Program Director for the VCU Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency Program. Dr. Friedel completed his residency at VCU in Med-Peds, serving as chief resident from 2004-2005, and he stayed at VCU for a combined Med-Peds Infectious Disease Fellowship. He joined our faculty in 2009, assuming the role of Pediatrics Residency Associate Program Director. In 2014, he was named Program Director for the Combined Med-Peds Residency.

PGY1 Patrick Murphy, M.D., recalls, “As a prior medical student at VCU, and now intern . . . I witnessed Dr. Friedel's impact on the program and the many people his residents interact with and impact for many years. His willingness to take time out for medical students (including myself) was extremely appreciated and a large reason for why Med-Peds was my final decision . . . ." “He's a role model in his professionalism, both in his demeanor and his ability to interact with colleagues and patients,” explains Andrew Hanna, M.D., PGY4. “It's been impressive to see him maintain all of these qualities while often being very busy on clinical service, being a father and husband, and being a PD . . . Finally, he's been an approachable presence and a consistently helpful and wise advisor. He truly has been not only a great physician leader and role model, but an outstanding educator in his actions and his teaching.”

Dr. Friedel is a member of the National Med-Peds Program Director’s Association, the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine, and the Association of Pediatric Program Directors, among other professional organizations. He has been recognized with multiple awards for teaching and clinical care, and his service provided to VCU and our community is too long to describe here. His extensive teaching portfolio describes teaching and formal mentoring of medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty in multiple specialties, pre-med students, and fellow Program Directors - all with outstanding feedback.

“David navigates those activities of the Program Director that no one seems to talk about – the constant worry about personal and professional issues that residents invariably have, the scheduling systems that have to be individually addressed in departments instead of just one, the requests for support and assistance for graduates from the last 30 years and staying involved with the national and regional needs and activities of Internist-Pediatricians – with aplomb,” states Suzanne R. Lavoie, M.D., Pediatric Residency Program Director and Professor of Pediatrics and Internal Medicine. Dr. Friedel has collaborated with colleagues to develop a New Program Director “Boot Camp” for new program directors and coordinators. He ensures that our Med-Peds residents are both well-trained internists and well-trained pediatricians. We recognize Dr. Friedel for shaping our Med-Peds program into one of the best in the nation.

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