The Education of Medical Students Moving Beyond Flexner

Providing high quality medical care to the American Public is the greatest contemporary challenge facing American medicine.

Crossing the Quality Chasm. A New Health System or the 21 st Century. Institute of Medicine, 2001 Education for the health professions is in need of a major overhaul. Clinical education simply has not kept pace with or been responsive enough to shifting demographics and desires, changing health system expectations, evolving practice requirements and staffing arrangements, new information, a focus on improving quality, or new technologies.

Redesign of Clinical Education - AAMC agenda - AAMC Project on the Clinical Education of Medical Students (2000 +) Millennium Conferences (2001 & 2002) Clinical Skills Education Project (2003-4) (over 50 medical schools involved in activities)

Redesign of Clinical Education - IOM: important gaps - Interdisciplinary team care Focus on patient-centered care Evidence-based practice Quality improvement principles Informatics

Redesign of Clinical Education - AAMC: serious shortcomings - Inadequate exposure to developmentally appropriate clinical conditions Inadequate attention to the teaching and assessment of fundamental clinical skills

The time has come to focus energy and resources on ….. what educational content matters for patient care and what works in teaching clinicians so that educators ….. can assess objectively what needs to be emphasized in the health professions curricula and what should be eliminated. Health Professions Education. A Bridge to Quality. Institute of Medicine, 2003.

Redesign of Clinical Education The Challenge for Schools acknowledge the need for change – discard the old arguments about the status quo be open to the possibility that very dramatic changes may be needed recognize that informed intuition is adequate for designing a new approach

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Redesign of Clinical Education The Challenge for Schools Create a vision and strive to achieve it!