In this phase of divergent thinking, we engaged a broad stakeholder group including students, staff, faculty and alumni to articulate our broad vision at the Pritzker School of Medicine.

Utilizing the Pritzker EVOVLES Ideation Incubator, participants submitted ideas and content which reflected the strengths of the PSOM graduate and the core principles on which we approach patient care and scholarship.

What are our strengths? Here's what people said….

• “Clinical reasoning education, and the ability to do meaningful research in medical school” [Faculty]
• “time dedicated to basic medical sciences, healthcare disparities, and the doctor-patient relationship is essential to our development as physicians and sets Pritzker apart from peer schools” [M4]
• “dual emphasis on rigorous scientific training and thoughtful engagement with societal topics, the duality of scientific and societal themes” [M2]
• “social justice initiatives and incorporating advocacy into the work of physicians”[M1/Dual Degree]
• “scholarship and discovery, clinical reasoning and readiness for clerkships, healthcare disparities focus” [M4]
• “a focus on education on the healthcare system, science and clinical expertise” [Alumni]

In this phase, two distinct processes occur in order to coalesce behind the vision for change, reviewing the themes and ideas brought forward during the Ideation Phase to begin to empower action.

The first process, utilizing the responses from the Ideation Incubator, is the creation of new Medical Education Program Objectives (MEPOs). The MEPOs will guide the content, placement, sequence, and integration of the new curriculum.

Pritzker Medical Education Program Objectives

The second step in the Creation Phase involves empowering action. With the MEPO in hand as a guide, phase-based and content-based working groups have begun to work together to create the new elements and supporting structures for the new curriculum.

Phase-Based Program Objectives

Finally, the Implementation Phase, which will begin in the Autumn of 2023, will involve the implementation of the new PSOM curriculum. In advance of that, pilot testing of curricular innovations from the Creation Phase working groups will be performed, as well as ongoing changes to the existing legacy curriculum.

Chair: Jason Poston, MD - Assistant Dean, Medical School Education

 

Chair: Jeanne Farnan, MD MHPE - Associate Dean, Medical School Education

 

Chair: Jason Poston, MD - Assistant Dean, Medical School Education

 

Chair: Adam Eickmeyer, MPH - Director of Medical School Education

 

Chair: Vineet Arora, MD - Dean for Medical Education

Chair: Korry Schwanz, MHA - Associate Dean, Medical School Administration

Chair: Jim Woodruff, MD - Dean of Students

 

Chair: Chelsea Dorsey, MD - Associate Dean, Academic Advising and Advancement

 

Chair: Barrett Fromme, MD - Associate Dean, Faculty Development in Medical Education

 

Chair: Jeanne Farnan, MD MHPE - Associate Dean, Medical School Education

 

October 14 2021 - Pritzker EVOLVES: Results from the Ideation Phase and Next Steps in Curriculum Renewal

November 3 2022 - Pritzker EVOLVES Keynote Address: Five major trends influencing the education of physicians - Dr. Clarence H. Braddock III

Managing the Change - EVOLVES Curriculum Renewal Retreat - Vineet Arora MD MAPP

Ensuring a Vision Of Leading with our Values to Educate Students - Jeanne M. Farnan, MD MHPE & Jason T. Poston, MD

April 2023 Pritzker EVOLVES All School Meeting

All School Meeting Slides

The new curriculum will be implemented starting with the M1 class matriculating in the fall of 2023 (Academic Year 23-24). Other students who matriculated before that time will continue to participate in the legacy curriculum until their graduation. 

Please feel free to email ideas/thoughts to the working group chairs. If you are a student, you can also reach out to the student representative(s) on the respective working group(s).

Every course director was asked to consider what content was most essential prior to beginning clerkships, what may not be needed or was covered in another course, and what could move to other phases. In addition, student input, evaluations, and curriculum maps were used to help guide course directors on areas of redundancy so that true integration could be achieved. Like other schools, some content is moving to a pre-matriculation module to provide more time during the first phase of the curriculum. Finally, benchmarking using national standards for licensure and accreditation were utilized to ensure critical content was retained.

Students will have, on average, 25 hours weekly of scheduled time in class, small group or clinical experiences in Phase 1. This affords ample time for personal well-being and professional development related to clinical, research, and/or other professional interests.

All Phase 1 course directors are committed to utilizing increased small-group learning and active learning lectures in their curricula. Scientific Foundations (basic science) courses will use clinical faculty facilitators to make linkages from the foundational basic science to clinical medicine. Physician Formation (doctoring) courses will continue to use small group facilitators, often peer educators. All course directors are receiving training and continued support for the innovation and refinement of their courses.

Students will have a robust series of clinical experiences in Phase 1, starting the first week of medical school. Students will be prepared to complete a patient history and physical examination in the first few months and will then have opportunities to longitudinally practice these skills. After starting with standardized patients, students will embark on a longitudinal preceptorship called the AIM (Ambulatory and Inpatient Mentoring) Program. This program will last for 9 months during Phase 1; it will include a longitudinal outpatient clinic experience with primary care mentors as well as an inpatient experience to prepare for their Phase 2 clerkships.

We are introducing value-added roles into the Phase 1 curriculum; through these experiences, pre-clerkship medical students can both learn from and participate in activities that advance the patient experience. Through the OPIATE program, pre-clerkship students will learn to address the opioid epidemic and spend time with emergency room pharmacists screening patients for opioid use disorder and dispensing naloxone, a life-saving medication. Through the SHINE program, students will have the opportunity to help with screening patients for social risk factors and working with social workers and case managers to mobilize support for these patients.

The pre-clerkship courses in Phase 1 will all be Pass/Fail. Clerkships will continue to utilize knowledge and clinical competency-based assessments that will allow students the opportunity to distinguish themselves. As these summative assessments are competency-based, there is no cap on the number of students that can achieve any level of assessment.

Our curriculum offers students the dedicated time–at the right time–to allow them to distinguish themselves as future leaders in medical scholarship. The Scholarship and Discovery program will be preserved and consist of a longitudinal Methods of Inquiry thread in Phase 1, a dedicated five-week Scholarship and Discovery block at the end of Phase 1, and research opportunities in Phase 3 (post-clerkship). Our funded Summer Research Program, in which the vast majority of our students participate, will continue from June to August after the first year of medical school (i.e., middle of Phase 1).

Based on student feedback, the HEAR course is being transformed into a longitudinal curricular thread. The first week of medical school will include a HEAR immersion experience, introducing the conceptual frameworks to approach these critical and complicated issues. The course will continue through the summer and fall, followed by the integration of HEAR content into the Formations courses (e.g., American Healthcare System) and in Phases 2 and 3 of the curriculum.

Students in Phase 1 will have vacation for the full week of Thanksgiving, two weeks of winter break, and a one-week spring break. Students participating in the Summer Research Program will still have 3 weeks of summer vacation, two weeks before and one week after.

Students will have five dedicated weeks, free of other activities, in January of the chronologic second year to prepare for the USMLE Step 1 examination.

The focus of Phase 3 will be to prepare students for the rigors of their post-graduate training. Students will have ample time for clinical experiences to affirm career decisions and prepare for residency, revisit the foundational sciences through a clinical lens, continue learning about their roles in promoting health equity, and apply and interview for residency. Students will also have the opportunity to re-engage and finalize their scholarly work and participate in structured and specialty-specific educational experiences to ready them for their transition to residency.