Professor of Pediatrics, VCU SOM

Department: Department of Pediatrics

When the Call for Nominations was announced this past spring, Clifton C. Lee, M.D., F.A.A.P., S.F.H.M., Professor of Pediatrics, VCU SOM, was on the top of many minds as the personification of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine award. Compassionate and empathetic?  Check. Respectful, approachable,  and accessible? Check. Welcomes opportunities to teach, illustrates professional behavior by example and provides one-on- one mentorships with students? Check, check, and check. Dr. Lee’s supporters describe him as “incredibly kind,” available, and a good role model for how to interact with patients and how to provide ethical and professional care by letting families know they are being heard and well cared for. He is also “the penultimate mentor for compassionate, collaborative care delivery.” Although Dr. Lee is a “man of few words, those spoken are well chosen, empathetic, direct and full of concern for the family and patient well-being He is a skilled communicator who listens and effectively identifies emotional concerns of patients and their family members; he has been recognized for  his expertise in family-centered rounds. Dr. Lee excels at bedside teaching, using the opportunity to educate both the learners, nursing staff and family on the disease- diagnosis and the expected clinical course. On the lighter side, Dr. Lee has been known to dress in costume on Halloween to brighten the day for patients, families, and his learners. “You need a human aspect to medicine instead of talking about tests and medications,” Lee says. “Without that, it’s not a complete journey to health.”

Dr. Lee received his medical degree from the Medical College of  Virginia in 1994 and completed his pediatric residency at VCU Health System in 1997, serving as chief resident before leaving VCU. Dr. Lee worked as an office practitioner and a pediatric emergency room physician at CJW Medical Center, and he started the pediatric hospitalist program there in 2007. In September 2011, he became the Director of Pediatric Hospital Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond (CHoR), thus returning to VCU. Dr. Lee serves as the Director of the M3 Pediatric Clerkship and was instrumental in the inception of the pediatric hospital medicine fellowship at CHoR, which is one of two such fellowships in Virginia. In 2015, Dr. Lee received the Senior Fellow in Hospital Medicine (SFHM) designation from the Society of Hospital Medicine, giving him an opportunity to be recognized for not only his work but for his commitment to the practice of hospital medicine and the patients he serves.

Dr. Lee is actively involved with the Academic Pediatric Association (APA), COMSEP, a national organization for pediatric medical educators, and AAP Section on Hospital Medicine. Since 2019, Dr. Lee has been a member of the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) Subboard in Pediatric Hospital Medicine and was instrumental in the creation of the first PHM Board Certification Examination. Also since 2019, he has been a member of the NBME/COMSEP Pediatrics Subject Exam Item Writing and Review Group, responsible for the development of exam questions for the Pediatric Shelf Exam. He is one of 15 pediatric clerkship directors selected from across the US to create and review item writing to generate new content for testing on the third-year medical student’s Pediatrics Subject Exam.

As noted in one of the nomination letters for Dr. Lee, there is  no better way to support his ongoing career as a pediatric medical educator and researcher than being chosen as this year’s Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine award recipient. Additionally, Dr. Lee has been honored with Outstanding Teaching Awards in Pediatric Clerkships (2012 & 2013), Richmond Magazine Top Docs (2012 - present), the Irby-James Award for Excellence in Clinical Teaching (2015), and induction into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society in 2020.

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