University of Virginia School of Medicine
Principles of Medicine Committee
Minutes
10.11.06

1. Nancy Payne, MD, addressed the committee about professionalism education within the context of the 1st and 2nd year courses.  Dr. Payne(Pediatrics) is in charge of the Professionalism effort across the entire four years of the medical curriculum.
   
   Dr. Payne discussed professionalism and how we teach and assess professionalism.  She is currently focusing on the first two years and is looking at how professionalism can be taught within the context of the 1^st and 2^nd year courses. She would like to have every 1^st and 2^nd year course incorporate professionalism objectives into the course learning objectives.  She is using the National Board of Medical Examiners and American Board of Internal Medicine as resources to address what professionalism is.  The University of Virginia has adopted the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) list of professional behaviors, available on the web at: 
   http://www.med-ed.virginia.edu/handbook/pdf/NBME.pdf
   
   Dr. Payne suggested that the following list of categories of professionalism (from the National Board of Medical Examiners) may be particularly useful for creating basic science course learning objectives:
   Altruism
   Honesty and Integrity
   Caring, Compassion and Communication
   Respect for Others
   Respect for differences
   Responsibility and Accountability
   Excellence and Scholarship
   Leadership
   Knowledge of and skills related to Professionalism
   
   Professionalism can best be critiqued in the 1^st and 2^nd year courses within the context of small groups or the laboratory setting.  Checklists and forms have been used by other schools and may be a possibility with the assessment of professionalism objectives.  
   
   One committee member pointed out that some medical students are afraid of confronting residents and attending faculty when they feel they have observed unprofessional behavior.  Students are encouraged to report such instances of unprofessional behavior to the Medical Student Advocacy Committee:
   /ome/advoc/home-page
   
   Reports can be made anonymously or students can ask that any action be delayed until the student has completed a particular clerkship or until the student has completed all clerkships or until the student has graduated.
   
   
2. Training in the use of the new Audience Response System (ARS) now in place in the 1st and 2nd year lecture halls in Jordan Hall was provided by Patrick Hartsfield and John Jackson from the Office of Medical Education.
   
   TurningPoint Technologies
   Currently Windows XP only, Mac version to be released in December
   Imports PowerPoint Presentations
   Can convert existing question slides
   Can create new multiple choice  or scaled question slides
   Will graph the polling responses
   Possible to download results into Excel files
   You can collect data anonymously or with identification of students
   
   Status
   Software & receivers installed in both Jordan 1-5 & Jordan 1-14
   Clickers were distributed to first year class; available for 2^nd yr class.
   Has been piloted in Cell & Tissue Structure/Physiology
   Students reported to the LCME site visit team that they enjoyed its use
   Now open for use by all courses
   
   Installation
   From a CD (available from medical education or from the Turning Point web site at:
   http://www.turningtechnologies.com/groupresponsesystemsupport/downloads-page
   No need to enter license info for authoring presentations
   TurningPoint is a plugin to PowerPoint adding new menus
   You must open Turning Point and then import your PPT file (can not just double click on a PPT file)
   Before using a Powerpoint presentation in Turning Point, be sure to  "Reset" all questions or the entire session in order to remove data from prior use or testing of the questions.
   
   Anonymous or not?  Your Choice
   By default responses are anonymous
   Every clicker is identified with a student
   Participant lists can be loaded on presenter computer
   Tests or quizzes can be administered using this system
   All results can be saved
   
   For more information:
   
   Information about Turning Point is available on the web at: http://www.turningtechnologies.com/highereducationinteractivelearning-page
   
   Turning Point tutorials are available at: http://www.turningtechnologies.com/audienceresponsecommunity/tutorials-page

Robert Bloodgood