MedPage Today reports on how four of those schools are faring with their grant money.
NYU School of Medicine: Uncovering the Power of Data
NYU med students are being taught to focus on the major role health data plays in treating patients by better understanding the intersection of medicine and technology. According to the MedPage article, “NYU medical school students are now given access to some large clinical data sets, including a database of every admission to every hospital in the state -- about 2.5 million visits per year to the state's 227 hospitals….The database contains information on each patient's ethnicity, reason for admission, procedures performed, and charges incurred….Students learn about the data's power and its limitations as they work in teams to come up with a clinical question they can ask the database, such as variations in charges, or differences in quality or length of stay.”
Brown University: The Rise of the Third Science
Paul George MD of Brown University talks about the challenges students face keeping up with the evolving healthcare system. “What physicians needed to know even five or 10 years ago,” he says, “is different than what they need to know today. So we often talk about basic science and clinical science in medical school, but a third science is emerging which is healthcare delivery, and students really need to know about that."
George, the director of curriculum of a new dual MD and master's in population medicine degree program, explains that Brown’s program will better prepare physicians by teaching them “the social and community context of healthcare, quality improvement (QI), and leadership.”
In addition to the integrated master's program option, all Brown medical students participate in a longitudinal integrated clerkship, a 32-week clerkship that covers internal medicine, family medicine, OB/GYN, and pediatrics all at once (a half day per week of each) rather than the disruptive start-again-stop-again 12-week rotation system that had been in place previously. The 32-week period will be preceded by three-week inpatient medicine and surgery rotations. Students will also have opportunities to practice their leadership skills.
East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine: Educating the Educators
The third school the MedPage article focuses on is the Brody School of Medicine, which has implemented a new teacher education program, aimed at keeping med school educators up-to-date with the new principles and science behind the new healthcare system.
The Teachers of Quality Academy is a 15-month program that features two-day learning sessions, an outpatient or emergency medicine clinical project, and collaboration with East Carolina’s College of Education to further train educators in curriculum development.
The school also started a Leaders in Innovative Care (LINC) program for med students who are interested in exploring the healthcare delivery system. The eight-week program takes place during the summer after students’ first year in med school, with additional coursework throughout the subsequent three years.
Oregon Health & Science University: Pace-Based Learning
OHSU has developed a “competency-based curriculum” that enables med students to move to the next stage of their learning when they are ready to do so – whether that is ahead of schedule or behind. Tracy Bumsted, MD, OHSU’s associate dean for undergraduate medical education, describes this new curriculum as being “time-variable and outcomes-fixed….Every student who graduates from OHSU will have the competencies we've defined; the variable will be the amount of time that it takes." Some students (about 10%, the school estimates) will finish med school in less than four years. Others will require additional time.
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This article originally appeared on blog.accepted.com.
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