April 7, 2025
February 17, 2025
April 7, 2025
- New Electives Approved: Bridges Subcommittee vetted and approved four new electives, which the full Curriculum Committee voted to approve today: Childhood Grief (2wks), Integrative Medicine (2wks), Lifestyle Medicine (2wks), and Medical Russian (4wks). After review and discussion, the Curriculum Committee approved the new approach.
- Surgery Clerkship Expansion: Dr. Rani Schuchert presented plans to expand the Surgery Clerkship from 6 weeks to 8 weeks as recommended by the Curriculum Reform Task Force. Surgery will continue to have two three-week clinical rotations, adding a launch week and a wrap-up week, consolidating didactic learning during those times, and resuming Saturday clinical duties. New skills workshops and a social determinants of health assessment will be innovations; there are slight changes to grade components and the assessment process overall to accommodate. The Committee voted to approve expansion plans, which will take effect for the 3RC Class of 2027 students beginning in Period 3 (4/21/25).
- Whole Curriculum Review: The Committee continued its Whole Curriculum Review, following three full sessions exploring our different phases, the curriculum map, and key outcomes. A revised map has yet to be completed, so we are delaying final resolution of the Review, but the Office of Accreditation and CQI presented a tentative work plan to identify the key areas already identified as requiring improvement: an updated map of all phases, a Step 1 root cause analysis, a new approach to clinical site comparability, and an improved responsibility for clinical experiences outline.
February 17, 2025
- Clerkship Assessment (of Student): New Form/Process: Dr. Raquel Buranosky presented the work of the Clerkship Directors Subcommittee, which created and approved a revision to the form used by clerkship faculty to assess students in the workplace. The new version alters the item categories, tying them to the six competencies more explicitly, with more detailed and actionable behavioral anchors. Preceptors will be pushed up front to provide summative comments with specific items of feedback, and no longer asked to give a "grade" based on an observation of a learner. These assessments will go through Elentra instead of MedHub, immediately available for students to review; they will be used by clerkship grading committees to help general final clinical and overall grading. There is no change in the proportion of the grade in each clerkship that derives from the clinical assessments. After review and discussion, the Curriculum Committee approved the new approach.
- Artificial Intelligence and Learning at UPSOM: We had an open discussion to follow up on our recent Curriculum Colloquium, which focused on AI in Medical Education. Students shared some of the common uses of AI for learning, and faculty described some of the risks and challenges.
