THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MEDICAL CENTER
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
For Immediate Release
Contact: Diane Giaccone, (215) 662-2098, [email protected]
CURRICULUM 2000: TODAY'S TRAINING GROUND FOR TOMORROW'S MEDICAL LEADERS
Increasingly, traditional medical education offered in this country is perceived as inadequate to prepare students for the rapidly changing medical environment they will face as doctors in the next millennium. With the mandates of managed care, advances in research and technology, and their associated ethical issues, tomorrow's physicians need to be better prepared for the future of medicine. To meet this challenge, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine will begin to implement Curriculum 2000, beginning with the August 1997 class.
Curriculum 2000 is an entire restructuring of Penn's School of Medicine curriculum, with emphasis shifting to preventiv medicine and to the integration of subject materials across disciplines. Like most medical schools, Penn educated students according to the tenets of the Flexner Report of 1910, which mandated a basic science foundation in the context of clinical training in a university hospital. However, health care has undergone tremendous changes in the 87 years since the report was issued and Penn's administration became convinced that a new strategy for teaching students was needed. Curriculum creators began with a clean slate and worked from the fourth year backward to build a comprehensive, new four-year program with increased flexibility and self-directed, innovative methods of learning to promote continuing medical training. "The explosion in medical knowledge has made it more important to teach doctors how to be life-long learners, how to access information, and how to answer questions. Rather than just filling them with facts, students must be able to both evaluate and utilize information," explains Gail Morrison, MD, vice dean of education and professor of medicine.
As the first and oldest medical school in the country, Penn has made a tradition of delivering the highest degree of education possible to produce exceptional physicians. Although the curriculum is new, the legacy remains. "The adoption of Curriculum 2000 continues Penn's tradition of educating and training the world's next generation of academic medical leaders," explains William N. Kelley, MD, dean of the school of medicine and CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. "As medical educators, our mission is to provide an effective learning environment for the development of first-class physicians/scientists. Curriculum 2000 provides such an environment as it has been carefully designed to prepare students to handle the challenges they will face as practicing physicians."
Members of Penn's medical faculty, physicians, students, and administrators collaborated at meetings and retreats to help form a curriculum that would meet the needs of the modern medical environment while maintaining the tenets of the Flexner report as a basis. The result was a new four-year program built around five integrated modules. The new curriculum emphasizes a foundation of core basic-science principles integrated across organ systems while incorporating bioethics, nutrition, and prevention. Students are also exposed to such nontraditional topics as humanism, professionalism, decision-making and managed care, communication skills, and population-based medicine in the context of clinical medicine. A large amount of free time, starting in the first year, has been added to explore extra- urricular activities, electives, independent research, or other pursuits to allow flexibility in developing a curriculum specific to the individual student's career choice.
With less time spent in lectures and less emphasis on rote memorization, the new curriculum will be more active, self- irected, integrated, and interdisciplinary. Students will also have the opportunity to utilize new resource rooms, complete with televisions, VCR's, X-ray viewers, organ models, and a computerized torso with automated human sounds built-in. The purpose is to help students gain a better understanding of the information they are presented with -- by hearing, seeing, and touching -- for future use as physicians. "The new program breaks down the typical classroom barriers to promote increased flexibility and interaction between faculty members, doctors, and students," says Frank Wren, president of medical student government. "Students will be exposed to all aspects of what they are learning."
To better prepare tomorrow's doctors for the ever-changing health care system, Curriculum 2000 was designed to incorporate the issues facing medicine today, as well as those that will be addressed in the next century. "The goal is prevention, not just cure," says Morrison. "We want future doctors to identify those at risk and help prevent the development of disease. Yet the purpose is also to assure that students leaving medical school are well grounded in the mechanisms and foundations of basic- cience principles so they are able to care for all types of patients in the variable health care environment of the future."
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Editor's Note: Dr. William N. Kelley, Dr. Gail Morrison, Frank Wren and incoming medical students will be available for interview.
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