“Am I happy I did it? Heck yes. I graduated sooner, and being an older student, I wanted to get out and practice sooner. I was guaranteed a residency and not as much debt,” Dr. Buchanan said. “However the future of medicine shakes out, we can use innovative ways to get people to go into medicine and, more importantly, primary care.” In today’s health care system, many of those doctors work in teams. So the University of North Texas Health Sci- ence Center (UNTHSC) developed a course that trains its aspiring physicians at the Texas College of Osteopathic Med- icine alongside those from its pharmacy, physician assistant, and physical therapy schools, and a nearby nursing program. “Across the health professions, there’s a tendency and a
history of training in silos. Even in the clinical years of train- ing, students often observe teams functioning, but they don’t get much instruction,” said David Farmer, PhD, who over- sees the program. Meanwhile, research continues to show that effective health care teams are a big factor in improving patients’ health and reducing medical errors. “Health care as we’ve known it is not going to be the same, and there’s going to be a need for collaboration.” The Tech and UNTHSC programs are part of a movement to adapt medical education to today’s evolving health care system. Changes in care delivery and technology, coupled with impending physician shortages, are squeezing medical schools to produce not just more doctors, but physicians who are well-prepared to practice in an ever-changing clini- cal environment. Texas medical schools are trying to get ahead of the curve with innovative approaches to meeting the current physician workforce demands. TMA policy generally supports such ef- forts as long as they ensure high-quality medical education and meet national accreditation standards. Also, the Texas Legislature set aside $2.1 million for medical school primary care innovation grants in 2014–15 to encourage schools to develop primary care pipeline programs like F-MAT and in- crease the number of primary care physicians in the state. The movement spans beyond Texas’ borders: This year, the American Medical Association gave $11 million in grants to test new undergraduate medical education models in nearly a dozen medical schools across the country. Schools nationwide also are preparing for a new AAMC proposal encouraging them to focus more on students’ competency — what they can do versus what they can memorize — a concept already emerging in the residency, licensing, and ongoing components of physician education and practice. “Medical schools are looking at their role in society and in the health care system and changing how they do medi- cal education based on the needs of the health care system,” said Steven L. Berk, MD, dean of TTUHSC’s medical school and chair of the Texas Medical Association’s Ad Hoc Council of Medical School Deans. Schools implemented incremental changes over the past decade or so as reports from organizations like the Institute of Medicine, the Carnegie Foundation, and AAMC called for medical education reforms.
24 TEXAS MEDICINE December 2013
BOB DAEMMRICH
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