MINUTES
CLINICAL MEDICINE COMMITTEE
December 13, 2010 

Attending: Sudhir, Herrington, Heald, McGahren,  Shilling, Buer, A. Innes, D. Innes,  Geldmacher, Bray, Newberry, Lieb, Chapin, Hemler, Wilson

The meeting was called to order at 5:05 PM. 

The recent request from Dr. Corbett for information from the clerkships was discussed. Most clerkship have been able to submit that information within the time frame that was suggested. 

The future LCME site visit was discussed. Although the official visit is several years away, it is important for the clerkships to review their objectives, curricula, evaluations, etc. in light of the LCME standards and annotations. We seem to be doing well with ED-2, and are working on ED-8, which deals with comparability. The importance of having educational programs for our residents and faculty related to medical education was emphasized, including the documentation of participation. The LCME seems to be moving more in the direction of “outcome measures” rather than “process measures”. Several ways to evaluate “outcomes” were mentioned, including modifying the evaluation form used on our internal electives to query whether a given student arrived at that elective with the appropriate knowledge base and skills to participate in the elective.  The potential for using a questionnaire, sent to residency program directors, for feedback regarding how well prepared our graduates were to assume their roles as interns/first year residents was discussed. One method might be to use a “tear away” questionnaire so that the information will be returned in a completely anonymous fashion, to be compiled so that we might have aggregate data for a graduating class. The potential use of a web-based questionnaire, such as “Survey Monkey”, was also mentioned. An additional idea related to using public information from various state licensing boards to determine what percentage of our graduates from a given class year were in “good standing” with their respective boards, and what percentage had complaints or actions filed against them. This might serve as a crude measure of professionalism, but would need to be done at a time when most of the members of that graduating class were in medical practice and not still in training.   The most recent version of the LCME standards will be emailed to the members of the committee for their reference. It is anticipated that these will be modified at least once before our next actual site visit.

Dr. Geldmacher announced that he will be leaving the University in March, and that Dr. Priscilla Potter has been nominated to lead the Neurology Clerkship. The committee thanked Dr. Geldmacher for his service and leadership as clerkship director, a member of this committee, and as Chair of the Academic Standards and Advancement Committee.

The issue of the need for “pagers” for medical students on the various clerkships was discussed. The local vendor who has been used in the past may not be available in the future. Most students have cell phones or another mechanism by which they can be reached. It is possible for text messages to be sent to some of these phones. There are a few situations where a pager might be preferred, but it was not felt that these warranted wide distribution of pagers by the School of Medicine. This will be reviewed further.

Dr. Littlewood mentioned the Simulation Center as a source for developing some clinical skills on the clerkships and electives. We may schedule a future committee meeting at the Center so that the committee members can be briefed on the capabilities and capacity of the Center.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:40 PM.

Respectfully submitted,
William G. Wilson, MD
Chair, Clinical Medicine Committee