University of Virginia School of Medicine
Curriculum Committee
Minutes – 05.18.20
Web Conference, Via Zoom – 4:00 p.m.
Present (underlined) were:
Chair (votes only to break a tie): Megan Bray
Voting: Juliana Bueno, Donna Chen, Katharine DeGeorge, Aaron Freilich, Fern Hauck, Barry Hinton, Paul Kunk, Robin LeGallo, Keith Littlewood, Vishal Madaan, Juan Olazagasti, Margaret Plews-Ogan, Steven Powell, Neeral Shah, Ryan Smith, Carlos Tache-Leon
Students: J.T. Morgan, Sarah Dudley, Erin Adonnino, John Popovich, Monet Lane, Logan Shelnutt, Brett Whalen, Marc Vetter, Paranjay Patel, Abby Norwood
Non-voting: Gretchen Arnold, Elizabeth Bradley, Maryellen Gusic, Mark Moody, Selina Noramly, Bill Wilson
Staff: Bobbi May
Minutes Reviewed/Accepted. The Committee voted unanimously to approve the minutes from the May 11, 2020 meeting.
Curricular Update. Dr. Bray offered an update curricular changes due to the COVID furlough. She announced that the Provost has approved students returning to the clinical environment in June. MSD21 will return on June 15th and SMD22 on June 29th. Further planning for curriculum changes that will be required due to this return will be forth coming.
System Review.
Renal/CPR. The Renal/CPR review was presented by Dr. Paul Kunk on behalf of he and Dr. Gretchen Arnold. The complete report is available and on file. The summary findings were as follows:
System Strengths:
- Excellent system leaders that are well organized, understand the needs of medical students, and are heavily involved in each area of the system.
- The incorporation of multiple disciplines in the system and complex cases discussed in the fourth week.
System Area’s for Improvement:
- Better integration of urology section
- Ensure formative assessments reflect the teaching schedule (some topics were not discussed until the following week)
- Discuss succession planning for next system leaders
- Lack of one unifying source text for this integrated system; system leaders designing such a text
Last year’s action items and status:
- System leadership and instruction: As is many years past, the students heaped praise on the System Leaders, Drs. Kalantari and Bowman. The students feel the Leaders are incredible teachers which helps them learn the difficult material effectively; they are dedicated and responsive; they are excellent at providing explanations that the students understand; and they want the students to learn the material well, within a clinical context, so that they can be well prepared for their future clinical training and practice. The students find the vast amount of teaching done by Dr. Kalantari to be very effective (and they would love to have Dr. Bowman teach more), as he knows exactly what has been taught at what level, which increases the students’ confidence in the System as a whole, and improves their understanding of the content. Continues to have excellent leadership.
- Organization of content across System: The comments and recommendations are exactly like last year. The overall organization and approach to delivering the content in the Renal System was very effective, students report. They appreciated the intensive and well-done Physiology teaching early on, and the frequent application of content to clinical cases. They reported that the use of the flipped-classroom approach was the most effective it’s been across the curriculum in this System. The students had useful pre-class resources (primarily in the form of PRLs created by Dr. Kalantari) from which to learn the material, which was then effectively applied in class through cases and problem sets. The major area for improvement regarding the delivery of content is in the third week, the Urology teaching. The students felt if could be significantly improved by revising the resources for this content. Given this is the second year in a row this feedback has been provided about the 3rd week of the course, a focused effort should be made to improve the teaching of this content next year. Improved with dedicated PRL, better integrations of urology content, extension of anatomy labs and benign GU conditions. Continued feedback that urology content could be improved.
- Clinical cases: Again, the comments from students this year mirror those of prior classes. The students appreciate the opportunity to work through cases with Dr. Kalantari and Bowman’s guidance. These critical thinking exercises helped the students learn the material in a clinically relevant manner, and they appreciated learning how these clinicians think through problems. Continued positive feedback for these complex cases.
- Review and practice questions: The main improvement the students’ felt could be made is to have different questions in the review sessions than are in the weekly practice questions.
Action items for next year summarized here:
- MTo consider more appropriate placement of urology section within renal system. Consider urology co-leader of system. This should be discussed with new urology chair, Dr. Greene
- Improve week 4 review of complex cases (e.g. incorporation of cardiology, more cases, etc.)
- Increase active learning sessions to 80% expectation.
- Discuss succession plan for system leaders. Consider urology co-leader of system
Note: The next Curriculum Committee meeting is scheduled, Monday, June 1, 2020, via ZOOM)
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