Mark H. Swartz, MD

Mark H. Swartz, MD, CEO and President of C3NY, is an internationally known medical educator based in New York City, who has been involved with performance–based assessments using standardized patients since 1991.  He is currently Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate College of Medicine, Adjunct Clinical Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College, Professor of Medicine at the New York College of Podiatric Medicine, and honored to be a Visiting Professor of Medicine at Taipei Medical University in Taiwan.

Dr. Swartz is a prolific writer and is the author of five textbooks. Now in its Seventh Edition (2014), his Textbook of Physical Diagnosis: History and Examination is the most widely read textbook in this field and has been translated into 15 languages.  It was reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine and cited it as “the most accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive textbook of physical diagnosis available today.” He is also the author of The Ultimate Guide and Review for USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills.

Sought by medical institutions from around the world, Dr. Swartz travels lectures on the use of standardized patients in medical education for teaching, assessment, and licensure and well as teaching clinical skills.  He is a frequent traveler to medical schools and hospitals in Taiwan, China, Japan, Hungary, Poland, and countries in the Caribbean.  For many years, he has been working with several international government organizations to prepare medical licensing examinations in those countries.  

Dr. Swartz has been recognized globally for his teaching ability and has received many teaching awards. Among them, in 1998, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) awarded Dr. Swartz their prestigious national AAMC/Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award.

His research over the past 26 years has centered on improving medical education and assessment of clinical competence. Dr. Swartz has published more than 50 seminal articles in this area, many of which formed the foundation of the ECFMG Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA) and the USMLE Step 2CS Exam.

The founder of The New York City Consortium for Clinical Competence and the founder and director of The Morchand Center for Clinical Competence at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine for more than 13 years, Dr. Swartz was the convener of the 2006 Ottawa Conference on Medical Education that attracted more than 1,000 international medical educators to New York City.  Prior to founding C3NY in 2003, Dr. Swartz was the developer and director of the Kaplan Medical CSA Program.


Learn more about our qualified Standardized Patients