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Medical Education

Dr. Ryznar is a passionate medical educator with expertise in curriculum development, content creation, and administration across all levels of medical education: undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education. She has supervised medical students, residents, and fellows in multiple clinical settings and won teaching awards in internal medicine at Northwestern (awarded by medical students) and in psychiatry at Johns Hopkins (awarded by psychiatry residents). Her online curricula have been viewed by thousands of students globally.

Dr. Ryznar has pursued special training in medical education alongside her clinical training. As a resident psychiatrist at Northwestern University, she gained a certificate in medical education. She then completed a clinician educator research fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The fellowship included year-long courses in curriculum development and teaching skills. Afterward, she became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins while receiving continued mentorship from Drs. David Kern and Belinda Chen (authors of the foundational Six Steps textbook). She retains her affiliation with Johns Hopkins as a part-time Assistant Professor. Most recently, she served as the inaugural Director of Medical Education at Sheppard Pratt from 2022-2025, where she oversaw medical student and continuing medical education programming. Currently, she serves as Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry at St. George’s University School of Medicine.

Curriculum Development

Online, Self-Paced Curricula

  • Capacity Evaluations
    Accepted Aug 23, 2019 as a teaching module in the Clinical Simulation Initiative from the Association for Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry. Created with Dr. Derrick Hamaoka (software programming) and Dr. Brett Lloyd (content oversight). In 2024 alone

    the module had 10,865 views from 22 countries.

  • Evaluation and Management of Difficult-to-Treat Depression
    Launched in 2025 for Sheppard Pratt’s Continuing Education Program, this interactive curriculum is intended to help psychiatric health professionals understand and manage treatment-resistant depression. It is free to use with registration. ‍

  • Suicide Prevention in Primary Care
    This dual set of lectures was created with primary care providers and clinics in mind. It is free to use with registration. It is among the most-watched lectures in Sheppard Pratt’s continuing education program.

In person Facilitated Curricula

  • Core Psychiatry Clerkship
    Developed the curriculum for a recurring 6-week psychiatry core rotation for St. George’s Medical Students at Sheppard Pratt from 2022 to 2025. This included finding appropriate clinical placements, developing all teaching materials, supervising students’ progress, and submitting final evaluations.

  • Building Empathy
    This week-long cross-disciplinary virtual elective teaches medical students how to improve their empathic communication with patients. It was taught at Johns Hopkins in 2020 and 2024.

  • Curriculum Revision
    Co-developed & co-facilitated (with Belinda Chen, Dave Kern, & Tina Zhang) a CME-accredited faculty development program on curriculum revision for residency and fellowship program directors at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine from 2019-2022.

  • Immersion Clinic
    While a psychiatry trainee at Northwestern, I coordinated a teaching clinic that introduced more junior trainees to outpatient psychotherapy and treatment. I recruited patients and developed the inaugural reading/discussion syllabus for the 6-month program in 2018.

Scholarly Contributions

Peer-reviewed articles: