gram, like getting approval from accrediting bodies so stu- dents’ licensure was unaffected. But there was no short- age of students eager to sign up for the program, whose individual United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) scores are on par with national averages. And one year less of medical school, plus a Texas Tech scholarship designated for F-MAT students, adds up to only half the usual amount of medical debt.
He acknowledges the program is rigorous and not for ev-
ery student, part of the reason eligible students are screened to test their maturity level. “We’re not in favor of all medical schools going to three years. We’re just advocating that if a certain group can do medical school beautifully in three years, we want to encourage them to do primary care.” In fall 2012, The University of Texas System began pilot- ing a similar initiative that aims to better coordinate stu- dents’ transition from college to medical school and shorten that total time in school by one to two years. Steven Li- eberman, MD, who oversees the initiative as senior dean for administration at the UT Medical Branch at Galveston, says those segments “are very disjointed, and there’s not a lot of intentional integration. That introduces inefficiencies and makes things longer and more expensive than they have to be.”
Under the so-called Transformation in Medical Educa- tion (TIME) initiative, 11 UT institutions, both undergradu- ate and medical schools, experiment with different formats that expose students to medicine and clinical training much sooner. Rather than requiring extended study in chemistry in college, for example, schools merge those courses and allow students to take more classes in biomedicine or even a pharmacology class. In addition to revised general sci- ence requirements in the premedical phase, students begin to learn some basic principles of patient safety and quality improvement and to practice teamwork.
“If we ask them to memorize a whole bunch of chemistry
and regurgitate it to get into medical school, that’s what they will do. If, on the other hand, we ask them to take a patient history and communicate with patients and demon- strate that before they transition to medical school, they can be a contributing member of the health care team from day one,” Dr. Lieberman said. Recognizing that young college students may lack the personal and professional maturity to handle more clinically focused training, schools integrate professional development into their training. “Traditionally, students are invited to come and hang out with us [doctors] and see what we do and learn to act like us through imitation or osmosis, and we expect them to grow up to be good doctors like we are,” Dr. Lieberman said. “This is about making that maturation an explicit and inten- tional process.”
Those students also could get lost in growing classrooms
as Texas medical schools meet AAMC’s call to increase en- rollments 30 percent by 2015. UT Southwestern wants to make sure students leave just as prepared without getting
December 2013 TEXAS MEDICINE 31
BOB DAEMMRICH
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