scholarly journals Building Community and Medical School Partnerships: Impact on Undergraduate Medical Education and Research

Author(s):  
Samal Nauhria ◽  
Irene Derksen ◽  
Shreya Nauhria ◽  
Amitabha Basu

Abstract Background: Community service provides avenues for social learning in medical education. Partnerships between medical schools and local healthcare agencies has paved the path for an active participation of a medical student in the community. This seems to have a positive impact on the medical knowledge and skills of students and also leads to a betterment of healthcare services for the community. National accreditation agencies and medical boards have emphasized that medical schools should provide opportunities for such learning to occur in the medical school curriculum. Various medical schools around the globe have adopted this active learning pedagogy and thus we wanted to explore how we can establish such a learning framework at out university.Methods: This was a qualitative study based on feedback from volunteer students who attended the annual health fare conducted in collaboration with local healthcare agencies. Two focus group interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded for thematic analyses.Results: Overall, the students enjoyed learning various clinical procedural skills. This activity was an opportunity to apply the medical knowledge learnt in classrooms. The students developed various competencies like communication skills, professionalism, team work and social responsibility. Prevalent health conditions discovered by the students included diabetes mellitus, hypertension and nutritional imbalance.Conclusions: This study explores how serving the community can bring about an educational change for a medical student. The community service framework promotes social learning, interprofessional education, peer learning and active learning amongst medical students.

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. JMECD.S17495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron M. McGuffin

There is currently no universally accepted core collection of competencies or medical education material for medical students. Individual medical schools create their own competencies and set of educational material using a variety of approaches. What has resulted is a medical education system wherein medical students are trained without any burden of proof that they are indeed competent in agreed upon areas of knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors befit of a graduating medical student. In fact, the only uniform assurance a member of the public in the United States can have for a graduating allopathic medical student is that the student has successfully passed USMLE Step 1 and 2 by correctly answering a rumored 55–65% of questions correctly (yes, that is an F) and that they have maintained at least a “C” average or “Pass” equivalent in all of their medical school courses. This article discusses these inadequacies within the current medical education system, and the need to standardize the competencies and curricula for all medical schools through a narrative disclosing this author's experience with trying to initiate such a movement at his own medical school.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anmol Arora ◽  
Georgios Solomou ◽  
Soham Bandyopadhyay ◽  
Julia Simons ◽  
Alex Osborne ◽  
...  

Background Medical school assessments, clinical placements and teaching have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ADAPT consortium was formed to document and analyse the effects of the pandemic on medical education in the United Kingdom (UK), with the aim of capturing current and future snapshots of disruption to inform trends in the future performance of cohorts graduating during COVID-19. Methods Members of the consortium were recruited from various national medical student groups to ensure representation from medical schools across the UK. The groups involved were: Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management Medical Students Group (FMLM MSG); Neurology and Neurosurgery Interest Group (NANSIG); Doctors Association UK (DAUK); Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) Student Members Group and Medical Student Investigators Collaborative (MSICo.org). In total, 29 medical schools are represented by the consortium. Our members reported teaching postponement, examination status, alternative teaching provision, elective status and UK Foundation Programme Office (UKFPO) educational performance measure (EPM) ranking criteria relevant to their medical school during a data collection window (1st April 14:00 to 2nd April 23:59). Results All 29 medical schools began postponement of teaching between the 11th and 17th of March 2020. Changes to assessments were highly variable. Final year examinations had largely been completed before the onset of COVID-19. Of 226 exam sittings between Year 1 and Year 4 across 29 schools: 93 (41%) were cancelled completely; 14 (6%) had elements cancelled; 57 (25%) moved their exam sitting online. 23 exam sittings (10%) were postponed to a future date. 36% of cohorts with cancelled exams and 74% of cohorts with online exams were granted automatic progression to the next academic year. There exist 19 cohorts at 9 medical schools where all examinations (written and practical) were initially cancelled and automatic progression was granted. Conclusions The approaches taken by medical schools have differed substantially, though there has been universal disruption to teaching and assessments. The data presented in this study represent initial responses, which are likely to evolve over time. In particular, the status of future elective cancellations and UK Foundation Programme Office (UKFPO) educational performance measure (EPM) decile calculations remains unclear. The long-term implications of the heterogeneous disruption to medical education remains an area of active research. Differences in specialty recruitment and performance on future postgraduate examinations may be affected and will be a focus of future phases of the ADAPT Study.


2021 ◽  
pp. 155982762110081
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Trilk ◽  
Shannon Worthman ◽  
Paulina Shetty ◽  
Karen R. Studer ◽  
April Wilson ◽  
...  

Lifestyle medicine (LM) is an emerging specialty that is gaining momentum and support from around the world. The American Medical Association passed a resolution to support incorporating LM curricula in medical schools in 2017. Since then, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Undergraduate Medical Education Task Force has created a framework for incorporating LM into medical school curricula. This article provides competencies for medical school LM curriculum implementation and illustrates how they relate to the Association of American Medical College’s Core Entrustable Professional Activities and the LM Certification Competencies from the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. Finally, standards are presented for how medical schools may receive certification for integrating LM into their curriculum and how medical students can work toward becoming board certified in LM through an educational pathway.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S29-S33
Author(s):  
Laurent Elkrief ◽  
Julien Belliveau ◽  
Tara D’Ignazio ◽  
Philippe Simard ◽  
Didier Jutras-Aswad

Abstract The legalization of recreational cannabis across Canada has revealed the importance of medical education on cannabis-related topics. A recent study has indicated that Canadian physicians report a significant gap in current versus desired knowledge regarding the therapeutic use of cannabis. However, the state of education on cannabis has never been studied in Canadian medical schools. This article presents the preliminary findings of a survey conducted to understand the perceptions of Quebec’s medical students regarding cannabis-related teachings in their current curriculum. Overall, students reported very low to low levels of exposure to, knowledge of, and comfort levels with cannabis-related subjects. The majority of students reported that they felt that their medical curricula did not prepare them to face cannabis-related issues in their future practices. Strategies need to be developed for improving medical school curriculum regarding cannabis-related issues. These findings provide potential key strategies to improve curricula.


Author(s):  
Kristina Kaljo ◽  
Laura Jacques

The preparation of today's physicians is a tremendous responsibility. For medical students to be successful, they must experience a multitude of opportunities to develop appropriate clinical skills, problem solving acumen, and medical knowledge. Due to various barriers, medical students may develop gaps in critical and foundational knowledge. The use of flipped lectures has the capacity to “mobilize” education and ensure for versatility and improved content acquisition through the implementation of both online and face-to-face teaching methodologies. This hybrid learning environment has the capacity to also address the increasingly diverse needs of today's matriculating medical student. This article identifies tools and strategies of how to incorporate flipped lectures into medical education.


Author(s):  
William G. Rothstein

After shortages of physicians developed in the 1950s and 1960s, federal and state governments undertook programs to increase the number of medical students. Government funding led to the creation of many new medical schools and to substantial enrollment increases in existing schools. Medical schools admitted larger numbers of women, minority, and low-income students. The impact of medical schools on the career choices of students has been limited. Federal funding for medical research immediately after World War II was designed to avoid politically controversial issues like federal aid for medical education and health care. The 1947 Steelman report on medical research noted that it did not examine “equally important” problems, such as financial assistance for medical education, equal access to health care, continuing medical education for physicians, or “the mass application of science to the prevention of many communicable diseases.” The same restraints prevailed with regard to early federal aid for the construction of medical school research facilities. Some medical school research facilities were built with the help of federal funds during and after World War II, but the first federal legislation specifically designed to fund construction of medical school research facilities was the Health Research Facilities Act of 1956. It provided matching grants equal to 50 percent of the cost of research facilities and equipment, and benefited practically all medical schools. In 1960, medical schools received $13.8 million to construct research facilities. This may be compared to $106.4 million for research grants and $41.5 million for research training grants in the same year. Federal grants for research and research training were often used for other activities. As early as 1951, the Surgeon General's Committee on Medical School Grants and Finances reported that “Public Health Service grants have undoubtedly improved some aspects of undergraduate instruction in every medical school,” with most of the improvements resulting from training rather than research grants. By the early 1970s, according to Freymann, of $1.3 billion given to medical schools for research, “about $800 million was 'redeployed' into institutional and departmental support. . . . The distinction between research and education became as fluid as the imagination of the individual grantees wished it to be.”


CJEM ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (S1) ◽  
pp. S116-S117
Author(s):  
L. Zhao ◽  
T. Maniuk ◽  
T. M. Chan ◽  
B. Thoma

Introduction: Fine art education increases the quality and quantity of observations that medical students make in both art and clinical reports. However, there are few free and accessible resources that teach art and observational skills to healthcare learners and providers. CanadiEM.org, a medical education blog, developed a new series called Spot the Diagnosis! to address this gap. The goals of the Spot the Diagnosis! series are to: 1) use art to explain medical concepts, 2) tie medical concepts to visual art, 3) hone observational skills, and 4) expose healthcare providers to art. Methods: Each piece of art for the Spot the Diagnosis! Series is selected based upon the author’s art history knowledge, resources found using an online search, and/or suggestions made by other healthcare professionals. The accompanying blog post is researched and written by a medical student in a question-and-answer style and peer-reviewed by another medical student and physician. Posts are uploaded monthly to CanadiEM.org and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Promotion occurs on site, via email, word-of-mouth, and social media. Viewership is tracked using Google Analytics (GA). A survey for readers is planned to assess who, how, and why readers use the series, but results were not available prior to abstract submission. Results: Six Spot the Diagnosis! posts have been published, each of which begins with the selection of a piece of fine arts that showcases a potential medical diagnosis and a blog post outlining an interpretation of the work informed by observations, historical reports, and medical evidence. Each was published as a blog post on a Saturday and added to a page containing a list of all posts in the broader Arts PRN section on CanadiEM. All contained a single piece of art as the focus, 6 ± 2 (median ± IQR) questions, 638 ± 250 words, and 6 ± 3 references. The answers to questions are hidden under drop-down formatting to allow viewers to arrive at their own answers first. In the first 30 days of publication, each post in the series was viewed 1582 ± 401 times. Conclusion: The Spot the Diagnosis! series is an online educational resource published on CanadiEM.org that aims to improve learners medical knowledge and observational skills by featuring fine arts pieces with relevant question-and-answer style posts. This series fills the gap between art and medicine and has been well received by CanadiEM viewers. We look forward to analyzing responses in our survey to further understand how, why, and who uses this new and innovative resource.


1968 ◽  
Vol 114 (516) ◽  
pp. 1417-1423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Walton

Educational objectives in medical school training used to be stated in global terms, seldom possible to implement and still more difficult to test (Objectives of Medical Education, 1953). The student's training hopefully was required to help him “to respect the rights and dignities of patients”, or towards “expecting to be a student all his life”. How to evaluate the presence or absence of these qualities after training was not conveyed either by the form or by the sometimes frankly inspirational language in which the objectives were stated.


2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (12) ◽  
pp. 461-462
Author(s):  
Riadh T. Abed

In the 1970s, Iraq made strides towards building a comprehensive, well-equipped health system free at the point of delivery. Medical education in Iraq was originally modelled on the British system and started with Baghdad Medical School in 1927. Two more medical schools were founded in Mosul and Basrah, providing Iraq with good numbers of high-calibre medical graduates. After 1968, several other medical schools were set up in various parts of Iraq, including three in Iraqi Kurdistan.


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