Bringing the classroom to the streets: A multimodal approach

Abstract

Students who are naive to the history of challenges faced by medical school administration can successfully lead reform efforts where faculty and administrators have previously failed. This may be particularly important for efforts that are shared by Student Affairs and Curriculum offices, where conflicts between supporting students and holding them accountable for behaviours can arise. Having students act as agents of academic reform is empowering to students by engaging them as key stakeholders in their education, while adding value to the larger system of medical education in general. This project involved a student-led initiative to redefine, reorganise and expand the professionalism standards and programme objectives at UUSOM. The faculty have responded by creating developmental milestone expectations matching the new objectives. The collaborative work continues on developing both curricular and noncurricular approaches to professional identity formation and longitudinal assessment of professional behaviours. More generally, this student-led process has helped the UUSOM overcome a decade of inertia regarding improved professionalism expectations and processes for supporting students, faculty and staff to develop our skills and values.