Rebecca Lyn Toonkel
Dr. Rebecca L. Toonkel graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Biological Anthropology from Harvard College in 2000. She went on to earn her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2004, where she was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Medical Society. After completing residency training in internal medicine at Columbia University of New York in 2007, she completed a three-year basic science research fellowship in Pulmonary Medicine where she studied and published on mouse models of nicotine-induced lung cancer.
In 2012, she completed a clinical fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital where she helped to design an FDA approved clinical trial of mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. She is board certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Medicine, and Critical Care Medicine.
Dr. Toonkel joined the faculty of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine (HWCOM) in 2013 where she holds the Harry Edwards Professorship in Pulmonary Medicine. She currently serves as an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and as the Assistant Dean for Curriculum, Clinical Education, and Advising.
Dr. Toonkel’s teaching and administrative commitments are varied. As the Medical Director of the Albert and Debbie Tano Medical Simulation Center, she serves as the HWCOM Strand Leader in Clinical Medicine overseeing the Clinical Skills and Simulation curricula including simulated procedure training, standardized patient experiences, and Objective Standardized Clinical Examinations (OSCEs). She also teaches extensively in Clinical Skills, Simulation, and in the second-year Organ Systems courses, especially in Cardiopulmonary Medicine.
In addition, Dr. Toonkel oversees the HWCOM Academic Advising program which helps to guide student learning, provides specialty and career guidance, and produces each graduating students’ Medical Student Performance Evaluation (a.k.a. “Dean’s Letter”). She has earned multiple teaching awards at the College of Medicine and was selected as the recipient of the 2016 FIU Faculty Senate Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Dr. Toonkel’s research efforts are directed towards both medical education and pulmonary/critical care medicine. She has secured funding to integrate point of care ultrasound into clinical skills education, improve communication with vaccine-hesitant populations, and to support student service leadership projects at the HWCOM student-run free clinic. She is also involved in research on regional consortia for the evaluation of clinical skills, visual tools used in teaching, simulation-based training for the basic sciences, and novel methods for the teaching and assessment of clinical reasoning.
Dr. Toonkel cares for patients in the ICU at Mercy Hospital, Aventura Hospital and Medical Center, and Baptist Hospital Main. She is married to John D. Couriel, a Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, and is mother to Jonas (11) and Eden (9).