Increasingly, medical schools are designing and implementing different approaches to medical education in an effort to turn out well-rounded, compassionate doctors who are simultaneously team players and dedicated to holistic patient care.
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According to In-Training, a site developed by students to describe about their medical school experiences, the American medical school curriculum has not seen significant change in decades.
The majority of institutions across the country rely on the same basic approach to prepare their students to become doctors: two years of intensive in-class scientific instruction followed by two years of clinical-based learning.
In-Training notes that the founding notion behind this system is that it is best to thoroughly ground would-be doctors in the knowledge and science of their craft before allowing them clinical experience.
Today, however, there are medical schools across the country in which this format is changing. Increasingly, schools are designing and implementing different approaches to medical education in an effort to turn out well-rounded, compassionate doctors who are simultaneously team players and dedicated to holistic patient care.
Here are three models that aim to achieve these goals — and the ways you can decide which approach is right for you.
University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville
According to In-Training, the medical school at this branch of the University of South Carolina system is changing its approach to traditional medical education.
In order to give students clinical experience from the beginning of their program — and to encourage them to think about their patients holistically — all admitted students are required to receive EMT training before their coursework begins. Moreover, during the first two years of their medical schooling, they must serve one shift per month as EMTs.
The University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville is also committed to producing physicians who can work effectively as members of medical teams, and to that end, students are divided into small groups and given clinical problems that they can only solve successfully by working together.
Case Western Reserve School of Medicine
Case Western Reserve has come up with its own unique approach to turning out physicians who are ready to face the challenges of 21st century medical practice. The school has developed the Western Reserve2 (WR2) curriculum with the goal of creating “physician scholars.”
These individuals will be competent not only in diagnosing and treating disease, but also in understanding the social and behavioral contexts surrounding it. With this knowledge in place, graduates will be capable of providing better care in health maintenance and disease prevention.
Through small, interactive discussions, self-led learning modules, research opportunities, and frequent and early experiences with patients, the school has woven together evidence-based medical practice, scholarship, and the guiding tenets of public health.
University of Virginia School of Medicine
UVA’s medical school deployed its new curriculum with the entering class of 2014. The program includes interactive modules that combine basic science and critical thinking skills, team-based learning, medical simulation labs (starting in the second week of the program), and a clinical skills center using trained actors to simulate signs and symptoms of different diseases.
The goal is to train students who have a strong knowledge base, deep clinical skills, and the capacity for critical thinking in order to graduate medical practitioners with a holistic and compassionate understanding of patients.
What Is Right for You?
A prospective student might well wonder which approach will be a good fit.
It may sound obvious, but reading the websites of medical schools that interest you is a great place to start. Each school is likely to tout the changes in its educational approach as a means of attracting innovative, creative students.
Websites like In-Training and Med School Insight are also helpful, as they publicize the experiences — both positive and negative — of medical students across the country. These accounts can give applicants a feel for the both the worthwhile learning experiences and the challenges that accompany these different educational experiences.
New approaches to medical education are producing doctors who are both ready to face the the complexities of modern medicine and able to work on teams with other healthcare professionals. Understanding the type of practitioner you want to be and doing thorough research on these innovative programs will help you decide which schools will be a great fit for you.
