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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). She hHer online curricula have been viewed by thousands of students globally. Currently, she serves as Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry at St. George’s University School of Medicine.

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 psychiatry clinician educator research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, under the leadership of Dr. Meg Chisolm. The fellowship included year-long courses in curriculum development and teaching skills. Afterward, she became assistant professor 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 in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Most recently, she served as the inaugural Director of Medical Education at Sheppard Pratt from 2022-2025, where she oversaw medical student education education and continuing medical education programming.

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. It has been viewed by thousands of students around the world. Created with Derrick Hamaoka and Brett Lloyd.

  • 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: