As per Parker Small, the agenda for the meeting is to review reports prepared by the four task forces. And then anticipate a first reading of a draft for the subcommittee's report.
The task force report addresses three areas: information needs of the Curriculum Committee, current data collections, and recommendations.
The discussion brought forth several suggestions: (1) the Curriculum Committee should appoint an "Oversight Committee" with PGY-1 members; (2) there should be an annual review by the Curriculum Committee at which time corrective actions are recommended if needed and specific evaluation questions are formulated; (3) annual surveys conducted with graduates do yield helpful information, but there should be more specific issue directed questions included; (4) in reply to a question by Bob Watson on how he felt about his preparation for PGY-1. Mike Okun indicated a very satisfactory level of preparedness to assume the duties of an intern.
It must be emphasized that in general all evaluations of the curriculum indicate that our students have a very positive view of the program and consider themselves well prepared for the function of a PGY-1 resident.
Larry Rooks was asked, as chair of the Curriculum Committee, to explain a lack of follow-up by the Committee. He indicated that he perceived it to be due to an ambiguity of the extent of the Curriculum Committee's power and authority to enforce the Committee's decisions vis-a-vis department chairs or reluctant course or clerkship directors.
Pat Duff emphasized that there are evaluation instruments both for evaluation by students and by peers. The former may have to be amended and suggestions are listed in the report. However, as mentioned in the discussion, the instrument for faculty evaluation by students must retain the questions required by the Board of Regents. A major recommendation by the Task Force is that the Curriculum Committee establish a process akin to accreditation of courses and clerkships. The specifics of such an innovation were not discussed. Margaret Duerson stressed the point that currently we rely too much on student evaluations which are documented as being notoriously unreliable. She urged that the task force report emphasize the implementation of a peer review process, preferably on an annual and not tri-annual basis.
A second major recommendation is to establish a mechanism to close the evaluation feedback loop by empowering the course and clerkship directors to assume a major role in the evaluation of the teaching faculty.