Special Feature

AMA's effort to change med ed gets great response from med schools

The $10 million AMA initiative to fund innovations in how future physicians are trained has drawn widespread interest from medical schools across the country.

More than two-thirds of the nation's allopathic medical schools have indicated they will submit proposals for "bold and innovative projects that bridge the widening gap between how physicians are being trained and the future needs of our health care system." The deadline for submitting a letter of intent is Friday.

The initiative is part of the AMA's Accelerating Change in Medical Education strategic focus area.

Under the initiative, the AMA will work to promote change that better aligns education results with the changing needs of our health care system by:

• Developing new methods for measuring and assessing key competencies for physicians at all training levels to create more flexible, individualized learning plans.
• Promoting exemplary methods to achieve patient safety, performance improvement and patient-centered team care.
• Improving understanding of the health care system and health care financing in medical training.
• Optimizing the learning environment.

In the next five years, the AMA aims to accomplish the following:

• Establish partnerships with select medical schools and health care systems to develop innovations supporting new, flexible and outcomes-based education across the continuum
• Convene a consortium of medical schools and additional partners to collaboratively evaluate successes and lessons learned
• Widely promote dissemination and adoption of successful innovations

Eight to 10 medical schools will be selected to share $10 million over five years to implement bold and innovative projects to change the way medical students are trained. View a video explaining the AMA's initiative.

Not surprisingly, medical students have some ideas on how to bring innovation to medical training. The AMA asked via Twitter and Facebook for ideas on change. Here are some of the responses.

Via Twitter:

Gamaliel J Roca: Start interdisciplinary work in medschool. Team simulations w/ nursing students, pharm students, PT/OT, etc.

Julia Schulkers: Programs that integrate student-centered learning right up front and deviate from standard clsrm lecture are on the rt path.

The Art of Studying: Adjust Step 1 to be more clinically-oriented - allows schools to get students in clinical setting sooner.

From Facebook:

Richard Bruno: The way I see it the first two years of med school need to be online standardized courses. Study for a month and take step whatever. Choose which hospital you want to rotate at for clerkships. Completely cut out fourth year. And just stay on or apply to another hospital for residency.