University of Virginia School of Medicine

Principles of Medicine Committee

Minutes 01.10.01

January 10, 2001, 1:30 p.m., Jordan 1-17.

Present were: Eve Bargmann, Robert Bloodgood, Bruce Cohen, Alfred Connors, Claudette Dalton, Carl Creutz, John Gazewood, Wendy Golden, Barry Hinton, William Hobbs, Joel Hockensmith, Donald Innes (Chair), Robert Kadner, Howard Kutchai, Heidi Scrable, Jennifer McClune, Darci Lieb, David Moyer, Lucia Smerage, Virginia Taylor, Brian Wispelwey, Marcia Childress, Karen Grandage, William Petri, Allison Innes, Richard Pearson, Jerry Short, Eugene Corbett, William Wilson, Gary Owens, Susan Squillace, Mariecken Verspoor, Vinay Chandrasekhara, Atul Gupta, Joey Dubose, Guest: Elizabeth Bradley

1. Elizabeth Bradley, Ph.D. was welcomed. She is working to define the Internal Medicine predoctoral curriculum in conjunction with Eugene Corbett. Her work will establish a predoctoral curriculum & evaluation mechanism in the Div of Gen Med and the Dept of Med, evaluate what is being done and make recommendations for improvement. Special emphasis is upon AIM, palliative care & geriatrics.
   
   
2. 2001-02 First and Second Year Schedule. Proposed schedules for next year were sent to Committee members via e-mail prior to the meeting.
   
   Barry Hinton asked that the Anatomy exams remain on a 3 per semester basis and always be scheduled on a Monday with Anatomy classes scheduled until Friday of the week prior to each exam. This gives the students the weekend to prepare for the exams.
   
   Darci Lieb requested that exams move from week 8 to week 9 in the first quarter to better accommodate the ICM curriculum units.
   
   Microbiology also uses the 3/semester exam schedule and when students were polled in December, 96% of them expressed the desire to continue with this exam schedule.
   
   Poor lecture attendance in the days prior to the exams not in the regularly scheduled exam periods was discussed.
   
   The committee discussed the possibility of more frequent exams for all classes and possibly creation of combined examinations. Integration of the exams was felt to be a positive move in conjunction with the proposed integration of the courses. Some members felt that exam integration might be more suitable in second year rather than first. Cell and Tissue and Physiology experimented with a combined exam for their two courses this year with good results. The relative performance on both sections was very similar to last years individual exam results. All classes using the 3 exams/semester model was also considered.
   
   The committee will meet again next week, January 17, 2001, 1:30 p.m. in Jordan 1-17 to continue discussion of the course and exam schedule. Student members of the Principles of Medicine Committee should make every effort to attend this meeting to provide input. The schedule will be finalized after this meeting. We hope! See attached Religious/Ethnic Calendar for Spring 2001. I am attempting to get a calendar for the 2001-2002 academic year.
   
   
3. Course Director Mentorship. Course directors were asked to share their knowledge and experience with new course directors. It was suggested that a hand book be created with information course directors need to efficiently run their courses. Allison Innes will be in contact with current course directors to begin creation of a WEB-based information sheet for this purpose.
   
   
4. Course Assessment. The Curriculum Committee will begin the review of the following courses:
   
   • February 8th -- review of C&T (review material* must be received by the Curriculum Committee by 01.29.01)
   • February 15th -- review of Anatomy (review material must be received by the Curriculum Committee by 02.05.01)
   • March 1st -- review of Biochemistry (review material must be received by the Curriculum Committee by 02.19.01)
   • March 8th -- review of Micro (review material must be received by the Curriculum Committee by 02.26.01
     
     

    * 15 copies of any handout material are needed. The Evaluation Report may be sent by attachment to dmr5y@virginia.edu. We will arrange distribution to Curriculum Committee members.
   
   It is expected that the review process will take one-two weeks per course. The Curriculum Committee would like to have these reviews completed by April, 2001.
   
   The most recent version of the self-assessment form will be e-mailed to all course directors.
   
   Bob Bloodgood reported on the initial test of the WEB-based student evaluation which was piloted using the Cell & Tissue Structure course this past Fall. The output from the evaluations is much easier to read and the comments for the free-response questions are all automatically collated. Since the data is all in digital form, it should be useful for comparing courses and for tracking a single course over multiple years. The web provides a useful way to disseminate the evaluation results and even to import the results into a course self-evaluation form, once that is also put on the web. The completion of the evaluation will be coupled to the automatic e-mailing of grades to the students. This helps ensure complete participation byt he students. It is hoped that the site will be ready for use by all courses for the Spring of 2001.
   
   

5.  Examination Policies. Many courses (Anatomy, Pathology, Cell & Tissue, Biochemistry) reported that the exam policies agreed on last fall by the committee regarding questions during examinations, locations, question deletions, etc. worked very well during the last examination period.
   
   A letter from a student regarding question deletions was discussed. Concern was expressed about the removal of questions from an exam after grading resulting in a disadvantage to individual students. Course directors were again urged to use the agreed upon exam policies. This should eliminate such concerns.
   
   
6. PoM-2 Design Group. The PoM-2 Design Group, chaired by Sue Squillace and Brian Wispelwey has been meeting regularly and will present their report February 1st to the Curriculum Committee.
   
   
7. LCME Lecture Codes. Jerry Short distributed diskettes and LCME keyword dictionaries to the Course Directors. Course Directors were asked to assign LCME code numbers and/or keywords if unable to find a relevant code number to each of their lectures and return to the Office of Medical Education.

Minutes submitted by: Donald J. Innes, Jr., M.D. Date: 01/16/01.