Dr. Watson announced the planning of the multi-layers of managed care education curriculum. He stated that the Curriculum Committee has to figure out what to do with the fourth year curriculum. Dr. Duerson is working with experts to develop the standardized patient for learning and assessment.
Dr. Rooks separated the committee into three working groups and gave each questions (outlined below) to come up with suggestions for improving the fourth year curriculum. The following issues were to be discussed by each section:
Other questions for discussion were: preparing for residency, what does that mean? Electives--how much is enough? How are they used?
The groups reported as follows:
Combine the 3rd and 4th year starting on July 1 and ending at graduation. Specific goals: get all core clerkships in; have review time for step 2 and take 4th year OSCE. Core clerkships can be done in 14 months (giving time for solid electives in helping them prepare for residency and show they are good at what they do). Follow up with 4th year OSCE (in terms of remediation). October through January you can accomplish:
Protect fourth year having some time to grow individually. Some students don't use their advisers very well. They need some strengthening; most fourth years use elective time wisely.
Comments were made that the LCME requirements are getting tougher. Dr. Davidson urged members not to lose site of what we already have in the curriculum. There are not enough structured clinical high quality sites for students.
Competency-based education is identified as a need to use fourth year OSCE to assess and as well as an opportunity to regain advanced skills, remediate or chose electives. It was suggested to somehow differentiate core electives, building an evaluative mechanism on career development electives. The question was asked: Why isn't Advanced Pharmacology more clinical?
It was mentioned that there was no distinction between true remediation from these core electives (not rehashing what you were taught in years 1 and 2, but taking you to advanced skills.
Dr. Rooks reports that he will take the results of this discussion and get together with Eloise Harman and Josepha Cheong and see if we can formulate this into some models and/or recommendations. Maybe include data about what fourth year electives are and what students are taking.
Dr. Watson will send the fourth year analysis around to all members. I have also attached a copy of Dr. Cheong's geriatric report.
None of the fourth year activity is evaluated or evaluated correctly.
Next meeting January 12 when we will discuss the geriatric plan.