Dr. Pei Chen is an Associate Professor in the Division of Geriatrics, the Program Director for Geriatric Medicine Fellowship, and the co-course director of the Life Stages block in the School of Medicine.
Dr. Chen completed her residency in Internal Medicine, Primary Care Track, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She also completed a two-year geriatrics fellowship in the Clinician Educator Track, at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, New York, where she also served as the Chief Fellow. She has been on the faculty of the Division of Geriatrics at UCSF since 2015 and concurrently in the Division of General Internal Medicine in the San Francisco VA since 2021.
Clinical:
She is dedicated to promote successful aging and to provide person-centered care for community-dwelling older adults with complex medical conditions and geriatric syndromes, such as fall, frailty, delirium, dementia, etc. She cares for a diverse patient population and has expertise in coordination of care for her patients, including caring for patients who seek geriatric expertise from other states and abroad. Currently, she provides primary care to the veterans population in the San Francisco VA.
Education and Educational Research:
Dr. Chen is the program director for the Geriatric Medicine Fellowship. She has special interests in finding ways to improve the care to older adults through medical and interprofessional education, quality improvement initiatives, and community education.
She is committed to undergraduate medical education as 1) a prior coach in the School of Medicine who taught the fundamentals of clinical care, mentored medical students, and coached medical students longitudinally during their early medical careers; 2) a faculty lead in developing a clinical skills session on function, fall, and cognition and small group session on multimorbidity and prognosis for all medical students; and 3) a course director for the Life Stages block that covers the lifespan, including geriatrics and palliative care, for all second year medical students.
Beyond medical school education, she has built an interprofessional learning community in UCSF Center for Geriatric Care where geriatrics fellows, pharmacy residents and students, social work interns, and law students work together to provide comprehensive care for community dwelling older adults.
Her passion in education also extends to teaching geriatric concepts to community service providers (e.g. case managers, social workers), direct caregivers, and volunteers to improve the experiences of older adults as people age in place through her work in the Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program and the Optimizing Aging Collaborative.