“The impetus for this is the current state of affairs with medical education, namely that it’s long, it’s expensive, and premedical and medical education have changed little in the 100 years since the current model was developed.”
its own unique programs, Dr. Lieberman says the project will integrate premedi- cal and medical education in four areas. The first is a prehealth professions
program that includes students interest- ed in a variety of health care professions -— including medicine, nursing, pharma- cy, and allied health fields — who learn core material together, work in teams, and are exposed to an interprofessional environment.
Second is competency-based edu- cation that bases progress toward the awarding of degrees on “what students are able to demonstrate that they can do, rather than how long they’ve been in a course of study,” Dr. Lieberman said. “The idea is to assess competencies, and once a competency is demonstrated, the student moves on toward more ad- vanced competencies.” Third is professional identity forma-
celerated advancement the norm rather than the exception. UT’s Transition in Medical Education (TIME) initiative is an effort by 10 UT System institutions to reinvent medical education and shorten the amount of time it takes to train new physicians. “The impetus for this is the current state of affairs with medical education, namely that it’s long, it’s expensive, and premedical and medical education have changed little in the 100 years since the current model was developed,” said Ste- ven Lieberman, MD, vice dean for aca- demic affairs at the UT Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston and co-chair of the TIME initiative. “And the reality is the practice of medicine and delivery of health care have changed dramatically in that period of time.” If successful, TIME could reduce the amount of time some students spend in college and medical school to six years, maybe even less. While that piece of the project is what “grabs most peoples’ at- tention,” Dr. Lieberman says the bigger
40 TEXAS MEDICINE November 2011
piece will be a fundamental change in the way future physicians are educated. “What I’m most excited about is that this is really a new model of what ought to go into physician education,” Dr. Li- eberman said. “The old model is learn science and then learn about diseases and then go practice, applying that sci- ence to diseases with all of the knowl- edge that you’ve got. What we’re looking at is a different approach that is much richer, much more complex in terms of the preparation necessary to be a physi- cian. But it also much more accurately and fully reflects the many attributes that are critical to being the kind of phy- sicians that patients expect.”
Building partnerships TIME involves four separate pilot proj- ects that partner various UT System academic institutions with UT medical schools. The UT System Board of Re- gents approved $4 million for the project. Each pilot is scheduled for fall 2013. While each partnership will develop
tion, which Dr. Lieberman says is es- sential to competency-based education. Being a physician is “more than being able to apply knowledge and knowing how to perform clinical skills,” he said. Physicians also must develop personal characteristics, demonstrate profession- al behaviors, and learn to integrate the values of the profession with their own personal values. In the past, professional identity de- velopment “has been done largely unin- tentionally and almost by osmosis,” Dr. Lieberman said. This part of the program would make professional identity forma- tion an” intentional process” within the curriculum that involves student reflec- tion on their experience, active mentor- ing, and role modeling, he says. Finally, the new curriculum would include nontraditional topics, includ- ing humanities, social sciences, public health, quality improvement, and more. Dr. Lieberman says these topics “have not been dealt with extensively in tradi- tional premedical and medical curricula but are critically important to the mod- ern practice of medicine.”
Seeking FAME
While each partnership develops its own pilot programs, at least two would seek to cut one year off the typical training time for a physician.
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