Juan Cendan, M.D.
Juan Cendan, M.D., was recently appointed assistant dean for simulation and medical education.
Cendan has been a member of the UF College of Medicine since 2001 as an associate professor in the department of surgery.
He also serves as the clerkship director for the department of surgery and the medical director for the Harrell Professional Development and Assessment Center, a facility that offers patient simulation for medical students to practice.
In addition to his roles at UF, Cendan and two faculty members in the department of computer and information science engineering have received two National Institutes of Health grants. One grant is for a surgical procedural simulation and the other is for development of virtual patients, which will give medical students the opportunity to examine patients with conditions that human subjects can’t feign.
This promotion will bring together his work as an educator and his interest in simulation for medical learning.
“I’m in a really good position because of my (bioengineering) background to bridge the gap between simulation and the education side,” Cendan said.
Under his new title, he plans to centralize simulation as part of the medical students’ curriculum, rather than have it scattered through their different courses. While these simulations most often involve human subjects pretending to have an illness, Cendan hopes to augment the practice to include mannequins and technological devices.
In 1987, Cendan received his bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Tulane University. He earned his medical degree in 1991 from UF, where he also did an internship, fellowship and his residency in surgery.
Upon completing his residency in 1997, Cendan worked in private practice at the North Florida Regional Medical Center in Gainesville before returning to UF as a faculty member in 2001. He has received many awards for both teaching and clinical work in his 22 years at UF, including an exemplary teaching award in the College of Medicine for the 2006-07 academic year.