Sweeping changes are taking place throughout the medical education field, including increased technological training, earlier exposure to patient care and more team-based learning, a report summarized on AMA Wire reported recently.
AMA Wire is the online publication of the American Medical Association. The report, “Medical Education: Health Care Trends 2016 – 2017 Edition,” was done by the AMA’s Council on Long Range Planning and Development.
The council evaluated several medical institutions, including Harvard Medical School, a member of the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium. It describes updates at the Boston-based school as “one of the most complete curricular reforms since the Flexner Report in 1910.”
The school is focusing on a “learning to learn” approach that includes a 14-month pre-clerkship program that provides the medical knowledge hospitals require. Students are also employed in a primary care setting once every two weeks.
The council said the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota teamed up with Arizona State University to begin a new approach to teaching first-year students that focuses on team-based care, leadership, high-value care, population-centered care, person-centered care, and health policy, economics and technology.
The report concludes with the council’s prediction that physicians in the near future will be more concerned with work-life balance and will likely choose specialties that do not require as much training and time as others.
