Michael Czekajlo
Dr. Michael Czekajlo is a Critical Care Physician at Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center and a Professor at VCU Health System. He has a long established in developing educational programs. In 1997 he assisted with the development of Poland’s national First Responder Program and then established the first American Heart Association training center to standardize emergency cardiac care in 2000. The AHA inititative lead to collaboration with Poland’s largest foundation Great Orchestra for Christmas Charity for a CPR for Schools Program in 2006 that has since been implemented in over 5000 public schools and lead to the training of over 1 million school children in CPR.
Dr. Czekajlo was the first Fulbright Scholar from the MCV campus and the first to earn an extension. In 2010 he established the first multidisciplinary medical simulation center in Poznan, Poland as his Fulbright project. This center became a model for Poland and on July 4, 2011 lead to the first meeting at the Ministry of Health for the development of a plan to have Poland become the first European country to have a national plan for modelling and simulation in healthcare. The project lead to Poland receiving $65 million Euro from the EU to develop the first national healthcare simulation network in Europe.
In 2016 Dr. Czekajlo consulted for the President of Poland’s Council on Innovation on healthcare simulation focusing on areas that would improve healthcare outcomes and identify commercial opportunities for Polish companies in healthcare simulation. Then in 2017. Dr. Czekajlo co-founded Alliance for Innovation Foundation (AFI) to continue work on increasing academic and business collaboration between Poland and the United States. AFI has been successful in moderating agreements and relationships between the Polish and US governments such as the signing of the Science and Technology agreement in April 2018 and building collaboration with Poland and NCI, ASCO, VCU, Medical Society of Virginia, Lake Nona Impact Forum.
Dr. Czekajlo is currently Medical Director of the Center for Simulation and Healthcare Innovation. In the past year his team in Richmond has worked with SimLearn to develop several national educational curriculums and a donning and doffing app for Covid 19.
Dr. Czekajlo completed his undergraduate training at Kean University and Masters at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. He then attended Poznan University of Medical Sciences where he completed an MD, PhD program and served on the faculty until 2000 when he began his internal medicine residency at Capital Health System in New Jersey and later Critical Care Fellowship at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Adress/contact details:
Michael Czekajlo MD PhD
521 Park Hill Drive
Fredericksburg, VA 22401
Tel. 540.899.1615
Fax: 540.372.3525