ECU leaders helping to reshape American medical education
On Sept. 22 and 23, leaders from the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University are joining leaders from 10 other top medical schools at Vanderbilt University to discuss next steps in preparing medical students for the changing health care landscape.
The 11 medical schools were awarded $1 million each by the American Medical Association last fall to participate in their Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative to reshape the way medical students are educated in this country.
“There has been a universal call to shift the focus of medical education toward real-world practice and competency assessment,” said Robert M. Wah, M.D., president of the AMA, the national organization dedicated to empowering the nation’s physicians to continually provide safer, higher quality, and more efficient care to patients and communities.
“The AMA is proud to be leading the charge to answer this call,” Wah said. “Over the last year, we have made significant progress in transforming curriculum at these medical schools that will help close the gaps that currently exist between how medical students are trained and the way health care is delivered in this country now and in the future.”
Wah said the Brody School of Medicine was selected for the grant based on their bold and innovative ideas, including their new comprehensive Longitudinal Core Curriculum in patient safety, which was implemented in fall 2014 for all medical students. The project aims to foster inter-professional skills and prepare students to successfully lead multidisciplinary health care teams.
Brody also established a new academy to provide faculty development in patient safety, quality improvement and team-based care. And beginning in spring 2015, they will enroll 10 medical students per year in advanced course work and experiential activities that will earn them a Certificate in Healthcare Transformation and Leadership along with their M.D. degrees.
“More and more in medical education and higher education, it’s not about lecture-based education; it’s how do you design a more meaningful learning experience,” said Libby Baxley, M.D., senior associate dean for academic affairs at Brody.
Over the next four years, the AMA will continue to track the progress of the 11 medical schools’ collective work in order to identify and disseminate the best models for transformative educational change.
Other schools’ projects include a curriculum that gives students with prior health care experience an opportunity to progress through medical school based on individual competency, and courses that ensure medical students are trained on the use of electronic health records. Each school’s grant project can be tracked at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/strategic-focus/accelerating-change-in-medical-education.page.