"The student who will succeed is the one who strives to learn what he or she needs to learn because their motive is to benefit their patients and not to get the grade or the prize residency or the prize whatever," said Harrity, Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSD. Stay focused, and success will come, she says.

"Time and time again, as a faculty member you see students focused on the grade, or they're focused on how their dean's letter is going to read or sound. They don't get it that if they focus on just learning, getting their skills honed as best they can and working on their knowledge base, those grades will come," said Harrity.

Harrity has been working with residents since 1990, first as coordinator, then, for the last eleven years, as director of the residency program. She also teaches first and second-year students the fundamentals of clinical medicine and chairs the clinical performance examination for seniors, a standardized patient exam in which actors play patients. Harrity designs and writes cases to be used during the exam and insures that specific aspects of each case are measured correctly. And she runs a remedial program for students who don't pass the program, evaluating their performances and suggesting ways to improve their skills.

Harrity's role as teacher and mentor is augmented by her unique clinical background as co-director of the Maternal/ Child HIV Program at the UCSD Medical Center since 1997. As such, she affords residents the perspective they need to succeed.

"Over the last several years, there's a lot more effort to look at the clinical education students are getting," she said. "UCSD has a huge science reputation with its research-oriented faculty, but we've made a lot of strides looking at how we educate in the clinical arena as well and how we give students a good foundation in ambulatory based medicine."

"Health care has changed dramatically," said Harrity. "People who used to be treated in the hospital are now managed at home; changes that have been driven by managed care and economics. It's a challenge to teach people the course of illness in that kind of environment when you don't have a patient sitting in a hospital for days."

The residency program also provides opportunities to work with all aspects of managed care, from home nursing to social services.

"When they get done here, they know they're prepared," Harrity said. "We have highly qualified residents coming into the program, and they leave with the feeling that they've gotten an excellent start and foundation to build their careers."

Harrity's own career grew out of a love for teaching - "my main interest," she says. As an undergraduate at UCSD, she took a lot of biology and physics courses and thought she would end up a college professor. "I don't recall when I had my epiphany," she said, "but a lot of friends kept telling me I should do medicine."

Harrity, herself, is a product of the UCSD School of Medicine, where she also served her internal medicine internship and residency.

Residents and students will take a variety of career paths, into the laboratory or into practice. Whatever path they take, Harrity is there to guide them.

"You have to meet the needs of the spectrum of professional careers," she said. "The challenge is to give every one of them enough of a foundation in both science and clinical medicine so they are ready to do what they ultimately want to do."