Perspectives
A Word From the President
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Jimmy Kimmel Highlights the Value of Teaching Hospitals
By Darrell G. Kirch, MD, AAMC President and CEO
Late-night television is characterized by light entertainment and comedy. On May 1, 2017, however, Jimmy Kimmel opened his late-night show with an emotional monologue about his newborn son, Billy, who was born with a serious heart condition. Full of gratitude for the professionals at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who saved his son’s life, Kimmel’s monologue was a moving and personal tribute to the value of interprofessional health care teams, the special missions of teaching hospitals, and the role of medical research in making medical miracles—such as Billy’s survival—possible.
Viewpoints
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Free Movement of People and Ideas Contributes to the Progress of American Medicine
by Edward C. Halperin, MD, MA, chancellor and CEO of New York Medical College/Touro College and University System
Immigrants have been vital in the fight against disease. And immigrant physicians today continue to contribute to medical advances, Edward Halperin, MD, MA, writes in a Viewpoint.
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Preparing Physicians to Address the Health Consequences of Climate Change
by Barry S. Levy, MD, MPH, Adjunct Professor of Public Health at Tufts University School of Medicine
The academic medicine community must prepare future physicians and help increase awareness about the health consequences of climate change.
More than a century ago, medical students often had to buy tickets to attend lectures. Some schools even relied on ticket revenues to pay faculty. Today, those tickets are curious relics from the past, while the lecture continues as a staple of medical education.
But the traditional classroom lecture is going the way of the lecture ticket at some medical schools. That’s because many schools are eliminating lectures in favor of a “flipped classroom” model in which students study lecture content on their own and use classroom time to interact with peers and apply their newly gained knowledge to real-life scenarios.
“If you love teaching, there’s nothing quite like being in an active learning classroom,” said Bill Jeffries, PhD, senior associate dean for medical education at the University of Vermont Robert Larner College of Medicine.
Research on the effectiveness of the model—also known as “active learning”—is still emerging, but early indicators seem promising. For example, a large meta-analysis published in 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and math performed significantly better in active learning environments than with traditional lecturing.
Academic Medicine in the News
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Hands-On Chemistry Course Has Students Taking on Rare Cancers
Jeff Field, PhD, a professor in the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, led undergraduates in testing the effectiveness of dozens of cancer drugs against a rare type of cancer called neurofibromatosis. The class gave the students hands-on experience, and the research may be helpful in testing new therapeutics.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Med Schools to Teach How to Discuss Patients’ Goals for Care—and for Life
The four medical schools in Massachusetts have jointly agreed to teach students and residents how to talk with patients about what they want from life and their goals at the end of life, so future doctors will know how far to go in keeping gravely ill patients alive.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
This is How Inspiration Strikes: the Story Behind Temple’s Baby Boxes
For every 1,000 live births in Philadelphia, nearly 10 babies died in their first year, a rate much higher than ones elsewhere in the state. After receiving this data in 2013, Megan Heere, MD medical director of the Well Baby Nursery at Temple University Hospital, read a BBC News story about a baby box program in Finland and thus began the two-and-a-half year odyssey that led to Temple becoming the first hospital in America to give away baby boxes.