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November 2002 Home

Poll Shows Continued Support for Academic Medicine

NRMP Update: AAMC Seeks to Dismiss Suit; Some Groups Seek Arbitration

Caring for the Underserved: The Art and Science of Community-Based Medicine

Restoring the Balance: Fostering the Medical Education of Native American Students

Physician Novelists: At the Intersection of Writing and Healing

"A Day in the Life of a Medical Student"

Caring for Community

Viewpoint

A Word From the President

Reporter Archive

AAMC Newsroom

Managing Editor
Scott Harris
sharris@aamc.org

Staff Writer
Elissa Fuchs
efuchs@aamc.org

A Word From the President:

A New Pacemaker for Improving Medical Education

As articulated in our 1995 strategic plan, the AAMC's principal commitment as an organization is to be the Champion of Medical Education. In pursuit of this commitment, the AAMC pledged to "stimulate changes in medical education to create a better alignment of educational content and goals with evolving societal needs, practice patterns, and scientific developments." Our Division of Medical Education has, over the past several years, spearheaded a number of projects and programs aimed at fulfilling that pledge.

Many of these activities have been conducted in partnership with other organizations, and all of them, of course, have required the active participation of our constituents. I think it's fair to say that the combined efforts of all involved have contributed to significant improvements in our students' educational experiences and in their preparedness to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing medical landscape.

But the work of improving medical education knows no end. In recognition of the continuing effort required to optimally align our educational programs with societal needs and expectations, I recently announced the establishment of the AAMC Institute for Improvement in Medical Education.

Six programmatic areas will frame the initial agenda of the Institute:

promoting professionalism within medical education;
reforming the clinical education of medical students and resident physicians;
integrating core content into undergraduate and graduate medical education;
enhancing public health education within the medical school curriculum;
re-engineering continuing medical education to better accommodate the need for continuous professional development; and
expanding our international medical education activities.

Additional programmatic areas may be added as deemed appropriate to address other key aspects of medical education.

Why the push for a new Institute when our existing Division of Medical Education is already positioned to address these areas? One reason is that too many people outside our community continue to believe that medical education is trapped in an outmoded paradigm and have failed to appreciate the tremendous changes in both content and process that have occurred in recent years.

We wish to increase the visibility of our community's efforts in this crucial arena and to underscore the centrality of medical education within the association's broad array of concerns. The domains of medical research and academic clinical affairs are, of course, critically important in their own right to the success of academic medicine, and the association mounts major efforts in their support as well. But medical education is the only thing that medical schools and teaching hospitals do uniquely and is, in the final analysis, their raison d'être. We believe the AAMC should more clearly reflect that reality.

In addition, the Institute will provide a more effective means for advancing our ambitious goals both by strengthening our ties to our constituents and by marshalling available internal and external resources. The Institute will have an external board of advisors composed of at least five medical school deans and representatives from both the AAMC's Council of Teaching Hospitals and Health Systems and it's Council of Academic Societies. The advisory board will direct the efforts of the Institute to ensure that critical needs are identified and that AAMC resources are targeted appropriately. As our tether to the real world, the board will create the vision that guides the Institute's work.

We also expect the Institute, with its unique structure and scope, not only to enhance public awareness of the educational advances occurring in medical schools and teaching hospitals, but also to provide a compelling platform from which to attract external support to facilitate further progress in addressing the shortcomings that still exist across the medical education continuum. Although our education mission will continue to draw heavily from the association's own resources, the Institute's ability to mount major new programs will likely require assistance from philanthropic foundations and others.

Membership in the Institute itself will be open to all AAMC staff whose work has relevance to our education mission. As with the many successful interdisciplinary programs that have materialized in our member organizations, Institute appointees will retain their primary appointments in their home divisions while also participating in the Institute's coordinated activities. Our intent is to gain explicit access to the impressive reservoir of talent already extant within the association, augmenting the expertise resident in our Division of Medical Education.

Medical education is at the heart of what makes American medicine thrive. Our new Institute intends to be a forceful pacemaker for that heart, driving the accelerating rhythm of change needed to sustain medicine's social contract. I welcome your comments and advice as we launch this important new initiative.

Jordan J. Cohen, M.D.
AAMC President