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OSR-Careers in Medicine Update
April 2007
The CiM Advisory Committee met at the AAMC in Washington, DC, on Feb.
25-26, 2007. The CiM staff have been extremely productive over the past
few months improving not only the CiM Web site and conducting research
on the tools used on the Web site, but also providing CiM training to medical
school faculty and administration, as well as serving as a resource for
career services development in osteopathic schools and medical schools
in the UK. Some of the ongoing and exciting CiM developments are highlighted
below. If you have not checked out the CiM
Web site recently, I highly encourage you to do so. It is continually
undergoing improvements and updates!
CiM-ERAS Residency Program Survey
There is a desire from students, faculty, and administration to have better
information about what selection factors residency programs consider important.
CiM and ERAS have created a survey to assess the relative importance of
various selection factors, such as:
- Step 1 & 2 scores
- Letters of recommendation (both within desired specialty and outside
of specialty)
- Grades (in required clerkship and clerkships in desired specialty)
- Honors (in clerkships and basic sciences)
- Interview (interpersonal skills, leadership qualities, evidence
of professional attributes, interactions with housestaff and faculty)
- MSPE
- Med school reputation
- AOA
- Class rank
- Personal statement
- Involvement in research and specialty-related research
- Elective rotation at institution
- Extracurricular activities
- Community service
This survey has recently been distributed to all ACGME residency programs
via survey monkey and data will continue to be collected through April
30. Data will be organized according to relative importance of selection
factors to specific specialties. The hope is to incorporate this information
into the CiM specialty pages and continue to collect this data annually
to maintain up-to-date specialty-specific information.
Specialty Indecision Scale (SIS)
The SIS is an exciting new tool to assess where a student stands in the
specialty decision-making process and provides results for each student
related to readiness, information-gathering, identity, barriers, indecisiveness
and self-doubt about specialty choices. It then provides student-specific
suggestions based on their results (e.g., using specific tools on the
CiM Web site, speaking with their faculty advisor, shadowing physicians
in specialties they are considering, etc.). Students can also print out
their results and take it with them when meeting with their faculty advisor
or career counselor. Advisors can utilize an interactive manual that provides
individualized advising recommendations dependent on the student's SIS
results.
Occupations Alternative Questionnaire (OAQ)
The OAQ is a new instrument to measure the number of specialty choices
a student is considering and their confidence in that choice. When students
register for the CiM Web site and then at the start of each academic year,
students will be prompted to list all specialties that they are considering
and choose their first choice. Data collected from the OAQ will help to
better understand stability in career choice over time and confidence
in those choices.
Clinical Faculty Training
CiM staff continues to provide CiM training to faculty and administration
who advise students in career planning and specialty decisions. The next
training session scheduled for March 8-9 in Chicago is already sold out!
There has been much discussion at recent Advisory Committee meetings about
how to train clinical faculty who are often providing advising to students,
but might not be knowledgeable about CiM services. To better identify
the types of skills and knowledge that advisors are most in need of, CiM
staff sent out informal surveys via the Alliance of Clinical Education
(to reach clinical advisors) and via the CiM listserv (to reach liaisons
and staff responsible for implementing CiM at their institution).
CiM Professional Development Conference (PDC), June 11-12, 2007, in
Salt Lake City, Utah
The goal of the PDC this year is to highlight best practices in CiM and
career planning programs. If your school is looking for new ways to improve
career counseling services, please urge them to send someone to this conference.
There are also plans to potentially utilize MedEdPORTAL in the future
to highlight exemplary career planning services.
I will be summarizing the programs presented at the PDC for distribution
to OSR reps. In addition, I'd like to know what career counseling programs
the OSR reps feel are successful at their own schools. This information
will be combined to provide an overview of exemplary programs across the
country for use as an OSR resource.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about Careers in
Medicine, please feel free to contact me.
Shana Elman
OSR Careers in Medicine Advisory Committee Liaison
Medical College of Wisconsin
shana.elman@gmail.com
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