Heidi Chumley

Nursing faculty teaching basic skills to medical students

Medical education often uses a ‘see one, do one, teach one’ approach to teaching basic skills, whereas nursing education uses a more intense, competency based approach. Many nursing faculty become experts in teaching skills; however, there is little literature evaluating medical student skills training led by nursing faculty. The purpose of this paper is to describe and report initial evaluation data on an innovative teaching strategy using nursing faculty to teach specific skills to medical students. Nursing faculty designed a hands-on four hour clinical skills training laboratory for medical students. All (176) medical students completed and evaluated this skills laboratory and their own preparation for these skills. Medical students felt the laboratory was outstanding or good (94%), the content was at an appropriate level (94%) and the relevance was high or medium (96%). Medical students felt more prepared to perform the skills after completing the skills laboratory than before, and when compared to previous medical students without the skills laboratory. Many medical students commented positively about the nursing faculty. Nursing faculty teaching specific skills to medical students is acceptable and effective and provides medical students with positive exposure to nurses as experts.

The Birth of a Rural Medical School— The University of Kansas School of Medicine-Salina Experience

IntroductionTo address a medically underserved rural population in Kansas, the University of Kansas School of Medicine (KU-SOM) established a four-year branch campus in Salina, to train students in a rural community where they are more likely to stay and practice.MethodsStudents enrolled in the Salina campus receive basic science lectures from the main campus in Kansas City via live, interactive television. All labs, small group sessions, and clinical training are taught in Salina by a small on-site faculty, supplemented by local physicians.ResultsIn August 2011, KU-SOM-Salina accepted eight first-year medical students. Local classes have excellent student satisfaction ratings. Currently, all students are successful academically and continue to express a desire to practice medicine in rural Kansas.ConclusionsInitial results indicate that medical schools can be successfully sited in smaller rural communities in the US when working in conjunction with a larger urban campus and using novel curriculum delivery systems. Evidence also suggests that training medical students in rural areas will result in graduating physicians who will be fully assimilated into rural communities and thus be more likely to stay and practice where they trained.

The Kansas Medical Student Loan program: a successful tuition-service exchange model.

The State of Kansas has provided Kansas University Medical Center with a highly effective mechanism to significantly reduce the cost of medical school for students in exchange for service. The Kansas Medical Student Loan (KMSL) program provides tuition and living expenses for 120 students every year. KMSL recipients commit to one year of service for each year of funding. Recipients agree to enter an approved primary care residency and work in a designated underserved location. Students who fail to meet these obligations must pay back their loan plus 15% interest.

Abstracts from the Proceedings of the 2007 Annual Predoctoral Meeting of the Society for Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM)

The Society for Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM; http://www.stfm.orghttp://www.stfm.org) is a community of professionals devoted to teaching family medicine through undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education. This multidisciplinary group of physicians, educators, behavioral scientists, and researchers works to further STFMs mission of improving the health of all people through education, research, patient care, and advocacy. STFM holds an annual conference each spring and a predoctoral education conference each winter. STFM held its 33rd annual Predoctoral Education Conference in Memphis, Tennessee, from January 25 to 28, 2007. Elizabeth Garrett, MD, MSPH, professor and predoctoral director in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Missouri, Columbia, opened the conference with a stirring plenary about the direction of family medicine and the legacy we, as predoctoral educators, must create in the future of our students. Thomas Schwenk, MD, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan, discussed the implications of training students in the era of new technologies and innovative approaches to delivering family medical care. Laurence Bauer, MSW, MEd, clinical associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Wright State University, delivered a motivating talk about funding opportunities from private foundations. Participants shared ideas and learned new skills in more than 65 workshops, seminars, and discussions as well as 38 education research and evaluation papers. Unifying themes included LCME ED2 (Educational Directive) requirements, community medicine, technology in medical education, preceptor development and learner and program evaluation. From the educational research or curriculum evaluation papers presented at the conference, a subcommittee of the STFM Education Committee selected 12 papers that we felt would be of interest to readers of Teaching and Learning in Medicine. These papers represent completed studies involving undergraduate medical education.