NeuroVoices: Douglas Kirsch, MD, on Advancing Sleep Medicine Education Across Specialties

Sleep medicine education continues to evolve as clinicians across neurology and other specialties recognize the pervasive impact of sleep on neurologic disease, overall health, and patient quality of life. From addressing fatigue in multiple sclerosis (MS) to identifying sleep apnea in stroke and REM sleep behavior disorder in Parkinson disease (PD), sleep-related issues are increasingly viewed as integral to comprehensive care rather than ancillary concerns. As this awareness grows, there may be a parallel need to expand and refine educational efforts so that clinicians can incorporate sleep principles into their practice.

Douglas Kirsch, MD, medical director of sleep medicine for Atrium Health and professor in the Department of Neurology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, was recently recognized at the 2026 SLEEP Annual Meeting, held June 14-17 in Baltimore, Maryland, as the 2026 American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) “Excellence in Education Award” recipient.¹ This honor reflects his longstanding commitment to advancing sleep medicine education across institutional and national platforms, including prior roles at the University of Michigan, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. The award underscores both his direct teaching contributions and the broader mentorship and collaborative work that have shaped his educational career.

In a new iteration of NeuroVoices, Kirsch discussed what this recognition means to him, emphasizing how teaching sleep medicine serves as an extension of advocacy for the field and a means to improve patient outcomes across specialties. He reflected on the progression of sleep education, the need to reach a wider range of clinicians who routinely encounter sleep-related issues in their own domains, and the importance of understanding relevant sleep disorders to optimize care. Kirsch also offered practical advice for early-career professionals, highlighting the value of engaging with the AASM, seeking growth opportunities at meetings like SLEEP.

NeurologyLive: What does receiving the Excellence in Education Award at SLEEP 2026 mean to you, and how has your commitment to education shaped your career?

Douglas Kirsch, MD: Any of us who do education, at least for part of our living, have people that started us on this pathway, and so mine was a neurologist at the University of Rochester named Ralph F. Józefowicz, MD, FAAN. He was a mentor of mine who really was involved in neurologic education and loved training other people to be educational experts, and so I have always considered education to be part of my career since that time.

I went to the University of Michigan, where I was on the faculty for a few years, was at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School for a few years, and at each stop along the way I've been involved in education, whether locally or nationally at the Academy or through the American Academy of Neurology. It's been really fun to teach people about sleep.

I said this as part of my speech, but teaching sleep medicine is also advocating for sleep medicine—that people who don't do sleep need to learn a little bit about sleep, because it affects everything they do, whether you do neurology or pulmonary or internal medicine. For the people who do sleep, they want to keep learning about sleep because they're super excited about sleep, and so teaching them is always fun because they're super enthusiastic and ready to learn.

Getting an award for teaching obviously is important for me. It's a recognition that teaching people about sleep medicine is something that I have found personally rewarding, and being recognized for that is really a lovely and honoring thing for me. But it also reflects back on all those people who really helped me get to this point, and all the people who are willing to sit and learn from me over the last 20 years of my educational career. I think that it's always nice to be able to tell them, “Hey, this is something that you helped me deliver on.”

How have you seen sleep medicine education change over the years, and what areas do you think need the most attention moving forward?

When I started teaching people about sleep, it was really from the basics. For sleep doctors, it was teaching them for the boards or teaching them some of the basics. Many people have gotten fairly advanced in their sleep career, and I think we want to encourage those people to keep learning, to be on the cutting edge.

But I think the biggest thing is really trying to bring education around sleep to a larger group. It's a recognition that regardless of your specialty, you probably touch on sleep a little bit, whether you're a neurologist dealing with MS and fatigue, whether you're dealing with stroke and sleep apnea, whether you're dealing with PD and REM sleep behavior disorder. Each thing that we deal with in sleep has correlates to other diseases.

Learning about that is hard because we all are experts in our own little areas, but knowing maybe even just a little bit about the sleep and the sleep disorders that are attached to your condition that you specialize in is helpful in helping that patient be better—whether that's better rested, whether that's making their condition a little bit better, whether it's helping their partner sleep a little bit better. But we all know that we feel better when we get just a little bit better sleep.

What advice would you give to trainees and early-career clinicians who are interested in building a career in sleep medicine?

I started my career as a lowly faculty member at a university, and I found that I grew it in a couple of different ways, but the biggest one was being involved in the AASM, because that's where I began to make connections. It's where I began to talk to people who were not in my small area in my university, but on a national scale. It's where I started to learn how to talk to audiences about sleep in different courses. It's where I learned how to run a meeting like the SLEEP meeting, which I chaired back in 2013 or so.

It's a recognition there's no one path that is leading to success, but it's a “look for paths.” Find that place, and whether it's at your local institution, whether it's on a regional level, whether it's on a national level, find a path where you can grow. When people ask you to do things, say yes. There comes a time in your career—and maybe that comes much later—when saying no is okay too.

But I will say, I did not expect when somebody asked me to speak at a course for the first time, that I was in any way an expert in that area or that I could deliver a talk that I felt that I was going to really teach people. What I learned was, “sure, I can do this,” because in learning that specific area I could teach it better and I learned it better, and by delivering that information in a way that people could understand, they now knew it.

It is really a reflection on: find a path where you can learn things and also express those in ways that other people can understand, and I think your career is going to be continuously upward. It's just making connections, it's talking to people, and it's not being afraid to say “yes” to something that maybe feels a little bit like a stretch but that you can grow into.

Transcript edited for clarity. Click here for more coverage of SLEEP 2026.

REFERENCES
1. American Academy of Sleep Medicine announces 2026 award recipients. American Academy of Sleep Medicine. News release. March 27, 2026. Accessed June 30, 2026. https://aasm.org/aasm-2026-award-recipients/