Resource Center

Featuring:

• Lawrence Smith, MD, Dean, Hofstra/North Shore-Long Island Jewish School of Medicine; Chief Medical Officer, North Shore-LIJ Health System
• John Rock, MD, Founding Dean, Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University
• M. Brownell Anderson, Senior Director, Educational Affairs, Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)

It’s not easy to turn medical training upside down to better fit the needs of today’s patients and health care system. Consider that the last major reform occurred some 100 years ago and many, many institutions and individuals would say they’ve done just fine with the basics and, besides, some of the new content areas like “humanism” would be nice to know, but they’re hardly essential. I’m going to be a surgeon, after all!

Well, don’t try that out on the Deans of some 20 new medical schools. The attitude also might not wash with a new breed of curriculum architects who pair students with patients in low-income neighborhoods from day one, who insist on the mastery of good communication skills, and who have begun to weave the science and the tools of quality improvement and patient safety in and out of all science and clinical coursework. This is the new reality for future doctors and a lot of the changes are occurring at the grassroots, school by school, with educational leaders and governing bodies just now harnessing the best that’s out there to create a new blueprint for medical training, overall.

Dr. Lawrence Smith is serious about change. At his brand new medical school, Hofstra/North Shore–LIJ, first-year students will, among other things, get certified as EMTs and learn firsthand about teamwork and what patients and families need in crisis situations. At the Wertheim College of Medicine–Florida International University, Dean John Rock is sending medical students into diverse and complex communities so they’ll immediately appreciate medical realities within the context of social and economic realities. The AAMC’s Brownie Anderson, who’s in regular contact with all the new Dean innovators, joins WIHI fresh off a conference highlighting a vast amount of change occurring at all the nation’s medical schools.