Reflections on Two Plenaries

In the past two weeks I traveled to Chicago twice to deliver two plenary talks on topics of great concern to the faculty and students of the Jefferson School of Population Health. On June 3rd, at the Association of American Medical Colleges Second Annual Meeting on Integrating Quality (IQ)into the Medical College Curriculum I admonished the representatives from more than 60 medical colleges to train the trainers---get faculty fired up about quality and safety and then let them train the house officers and medical students. The shortage of appropriately trained faculty in our field is the rate limiting step to getting the tenets of quality and safety more securely into the modern curriculum.

On June 10, at the Annual Meeting of the Facutly Practice Solutions Center of the University Healthsystem Consortium, I urged Practice Plan leaders from across the country to prepare now for health reform in the ambulatory arena. This means helping physicians from every clinical department to measure and evaluate the quality and safety of the care they deliver in the office setting. I envision that health reform as it relates to the office practice of medicine will mean ---No outcome, No income!! That is, doctors will be paid when we reach our evidence based clinical goals, and if we fail, we will be paid less or not at all. A brave new world for all of us.

The Jefferson School of Population Health, and its faculty and staff, are recognized leaders in medical school curriculum reform and preparing clinical faculty for the realities of a payment system based on clinical accountability. These two issues are among many that we are busily researching,analyzing and speaking about.

How is your organization tackling curricular reform and preparing for practice under the new bill?? What innovative approaches are you using and what can we all learn from one another??

AMSA Quality Institute

In the past three days, nearly two dozen medical students and premeds descended on the Jefferson School of Population Health for the Second Annual AMSA Quality and Safety Institute. AMSA is the American Medical Student Association, an important national membership organization that seeks to create a group of future physician leaders for our country. Recognizing the growing importance of quality and safety in the curriculum, these students spent a weekend learning about the cultural barriers to quality, the tools to measure quality and the ins and outs of moving ahead with key campus projects at their home institutions. The faculty came from JSPH, Christiana Care, Drexel U College of Medicine, The NBME, New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center, and RWJ Medical School. The students participated in lectures, workshops, two dinner programs as they built their leadership portfolios. Quality and Safety are NOT ELECTIVES and these students will go forth to put this critical information into the standard med school curriculum. They are armed and dangerous!!---most current faculty know little about this entire field. It is time to recognize how important these issues are to training the doctor of tomorrow. WHAT is your school doing to tackle this challenge?? Should every medical school participate is such an Institute?? What more can AMSA do to institutionalize this approach to learning?? DAVID NASH DEAN JSPH