Value-Added Clinical Systems Learning Roles for Medical Students That Transform Education and Health: A Guide for Building Partnerships Between Medical Schools and Health Systems

Abstract

To ensure physician readiness for practice and leadership in changing health systems, an emerging three-pillar framework for undergraduate medical education integrates the biomedical and clinical sciences with health systems science, which includes population health, health care policy, and interprofessional teamwork. However, the partnerships between medical schools and health systems that are commonplace today use health systems as a substrate for learning. Educators need to transform the relationship between medical schools and health systems. One opportunity is the design of authentic workplace roles for medical students to add relevance to medical education and patient care. Based on the experiences at two U.S. medical schools, the authors describe principles and strategies for meaningful medical school-health system partnerships to engage students in value-added clinical systems learning roles. In 2013, the schools began large-scale efforts to develop novel required longitudinal, authentic health systems science curricula in classrooms and workplaces for all first-year students. In designing the new medical school-health system partnerships, the authors combined two models in an intersecting manner-Kotter's change management and Kern's curriculum development steps. Mapped to this framework, they recommend strategies for building mutually beneficial medical school-health system partnerships, including developing a shared vision and strategy and identifying learning goals and objectives; empowering broad-based action and overcoming barriers in implementation; and generating short-term wins in implementation. Applying this framework can lead to value-added clinical systems learning roles for students, meaningful medical school-health system partnerships, and a generation of future physicians prepared to lead health systems change.

How Medical Schools Can Promote Community Collaboration Through Health Systems Science Education

“…At the authors' institution (Penn State College of Medicine [PSCOM]), the HSS curriculum extends across all 4 years of medical school training and focuses on understanding, improving, and functioning within the health care system. 29,30 In coursework, for example, medical students serve as patient navigators with the goals of understanding patients' needs and assisting them in their lived environments while improving both patients' and their own ability to navigate the health care system. Additionally, these students pursue activities catalyzed by the HSS curriculum that focus on learning about and improving health systems, such as population and public health projects.…”

Student Learning Approaches in A Ghanaian Medical School

“…My long-term memory is somehow very good, like even if I learn something right now, I can reproduce it in say, 10…”

“…In Ghana, where medical students do not have to pursue a pre-medical programme, their approach to learning their curriculum probably should stimulate much research interest. This is also relevant because of the professional demands of medicine and the vocational emphasis on lifelong learning (10). As a result, this qualitative study has been conducted to capture the unique mix of factors influencing learning approaches among students of the School of Medical Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (SMS-KNUST).…”

Integração ensino-serviço no contexto das escolas médicas brasileiras: revisão integrativa

“…The highlight in this new situation is the use of networks as a space for shaping new health professionals. One of the main supporting pillars 26 of the construction of education-service community integration is the interrelation between its underlying stakeholders.…”

“…Although previous experiences of education-service community integration have brought few results in the reorientation of medical education, they have had a fundamental contribution to generate reflections in schools that, progressively, no longer see in these processes only the opportunity of internship for their students but as potential transformers of social reality and, thus, of the formative process 26,27 .…”