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AAMC Files Brief Supporting U-Michigan Admissions Policy AAMC Panel Defining Physician Roles Within Bioterrorism Education Innovations in Medical Education: "Teaching - and Learning - Through Collaboration" Wanted: More Anatomy Instructors Viewpoint: Avoiding Faculty Burnout A Word from the President "A Day in the Life of a Medical Student"
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Innovations in Medical Education: Teaching - and Learning - Through CollaborationA program at GWU offers a certificate in medical educationThis is the third installment in a 2003 series of columns that will examine efforts to break new ground in medical education curricula.
A joint initiative by George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development and the Children's National Medical Center (CNMC) has the potential to significantly transform GWU's department of pediatrics. The Master Teacher Certificate in Medical Education, a program in the theory and practice of teaching medicine, aims to facilitate innovation by increasing the teaching, scholarship, and leadership capabilities of CNMC faculty. "Part of the program's full process is the development of a learning contract for each of the participants," explains Patience White, M.D., program director and professor of medicine and pediatrics at GWU. "Those contracts list ways in which the involved faculty will change how things are taught in their department." The program, which began in July 2002, consists of 18 credit hours of courses, taken for one year, that count toward a certificate in medical education. Participants have the choice to go further and take 18 additional credits to get a master's degree in that field. Eleven of the program's 13 participants have 30 percent of their salaries funded by the CNMC, which enables the hospital's practice groups to pay for substitute doctors to replace them while they are in class. Program applicants underwent a very competitive selection process, according to Bernhard Wiedermann, M.D., the program's co-director and an associate professor and vice chair for education at GWU's Department of Pediatrics. "We chose from quite a mixture of backgrounds and specialties. It's been interesting to see the group mold itself into a learning community and really develop enthusiasm for what's being taught," Dr. Wiedermann says. Terry Carter, Ed.D., an adjunct faculty member at GWU's education school who teaches courses for the program, also witnessed the faculty's enthusiasm. "I saw a marked change in the physicians from the time they walked into the program in July, being very skeptical that they could really learn anything new about teaching, to where they were in December, eager to learn and hungry for more," says Dr. Carter. "The physicians are learning how to teach and learn collaboratively," Dr. Carter says. "Although they all have worked in the same hospital, most of them had never worked collaboratively before," she adds, referring primarily to interdepartmental collaboration in projects. Cultivating leadershipThe program offers courses in strategies for learning in medical environ- ments, evidence-based medicine in medical education, qualitative research methods, and application of teaching and learning principles to clinical settings. "Everyone in the program has some kind of educational leadership position," explains Christina Johns, M.D., assistant of pediatrics and emergency medicine at GWU.
"I am a fellowship director for emergency medicine. For me, this program is going to be helpful not only in building better pieces of the fellowship and improving it, but also in infiltrating the rest of the epartments and the hospital with collaboration on educational research and curriculum projects," she says. Dorothy Bulas, M.D., professor of pediatrics and radiology at GWU, agrees that the increased departmental collaboration that will likely result from this initiative will be extremely advantageous. "This collaboration means that each department won't have to reinvent the wheel. "With the ACGME [Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education] revamping how we evaluate residents and fellows, there's a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done. Our hope is that by creating a core with some expertise, we can develop templates that will make us a resource for other departments," she adds. Dr. Johns thinks that this collaboration should not stop at the institutional level. "I hope that other medical schools will model this program to try to develop a cadre of medical education scholars who can collaborate on a national basis. I hope that GWU will be a pioneer." By Suria Santana |
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