Betsy Williams PhD, MPH, FSACME

Clinical Director
Professional Renewal Center

Dr. Betsy White Williams is the clinical director at the Professional Renewal Center®, an assessment and treatment/remediation facility for health professionals in difficulty. She is also the director of continuing education at Wales Behavioral Assessment. She has worked with medical students, residents/fellows and practicing physicians in difficulty for over 20 years. Her research and clinical foci are in exploring issues related to professionalism lapses, poor interpersonal and communication skills, clinical competency, substance use disorders, burnout, poor professional boundaries, disruptive behavior, and concerns related to aging. She is particularly interested in understanding the relationships among performance issues, medical and mental health conditions, metacognitive factors, system issues and successful return to practice. Dr. Williams is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of Kansas.

In 2022 she and her research team were awarded the American Board in Internal Medicine John A Benson Jr., MD Professionalism Article Prize for the article Adverse Childhood Experiences in Trainees and Physicians with Professionalism Concerns: Implications for Education.

She is the former President and current fellow of the Society of Academic Continuing Medical Education (SACME). Over the course of her involvement with SACME she has been active in the Program, Research/Scholarship and Strategic Affairs Committees. In 2013, she received SACME’s Fox Award for Best Research Presentation for her presentation Self Efficacy and Structural Barriers as Mediators of Practice Change. In 2017, she received the Dave Davis Research in CME Award at SACME’s Annual Meeting.

Dr. Williams is involved in several other scholarly activities. She lectures and facilitates workshops and lectures on professionalism, provider wellbeing, and developing a scholarly approach to providing CME/CPD. She is a reviewer for Academic Medicine, Academic Psychiatry, Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, and The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. 

Dr. Williams completed her undergraduate education at Wellesley College, her master’s degree in public health at Boston University, and her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Southern California. She completed her postdoctoral training in clinical neuropsychology at the University of California, San Diego.