Dear Students:
We are emailing with good news regarding our status with the LCME. At its June 12-14 meeting the LCME voted to accept the action plan submitted in April. This affirmative vote indicated that the LCME believes we are on the right track to reverse our probationary status. The next step will be to schedule a site visit sometime within the next 12 months to determine whether we have corrected the areas of non-compliance as outlined in previous communications. The LCME will set the date for the return site visit, but we expect that it will take place in the summer of 2013.
In our April letter and remediation plan to the LCME, the key components of our response were:
1) the seven basic science departments were reorganized under the SOM; the medical dean now has full budgetary and appointment/retention/activity authority over basic science faculty and regularly meets with the basic department chairs as part of his supervisory responsibility;
2) state funds allocated to the clinical departments are being distributed with a formula that is to a large extent based on undergraduate educational RVUs. The newly appointed Vice Dean for Education now has sufficient independent funds to directly compensate faculty members for their role in curricular leadership, particularly during the pre-clinical years;
3) the leadership has infused critical new education resources, both personnel and funding; these support the central medical school mission of education, including the establishment of an Office of Undergraduate Medical Education with new facilities that opened in May 2012;
4) the Curriculum Committees institutional oversight for the design, management, evaluation and authority to enact change has been embraced by the SOM Dean and codified into policies and procedures. A robust curriculum management and evaluation system, One45, was purchased, with capabilities for mapping the location of all objectives and competencies within the pre-clinical and clinical curriculum. All courses and clerkships, as well as the curriculum as a whole, will be centrally evaluated and improved/modified; curricular gaps and redundancies will be readily identifiable;
5) modifications in the current pre-clinical curriculum (final year taught 2012-2013) will decrease dependence on lectures as the primary content delivery method and increase instructional opportunities for active learning and the development of lifelong learning skills;
6) the new curriculum with the moniker, CIRCLE (Curricular Integration: Researchers, Clinicians, Leaders, Educators), has been developed. The new pre-clinical structure (and concurrent reform of the clinical years) will integrate basic and clinical sciences vertically and horizontally, incorporate active learning principles and pedagogies, foster the development of self-directed learning skills and appraisal, and inculcate the concept of lifelong learning via continuous and centralized curricular design, management, evaluation, assessment and improvement, incorporating the use of interactive technologies.
The development of these initiatives has been an enormous effort on the part of many members of the faculty, but we particularly thank the members of the Task Force (Drs. Larry Barnes, Paula Shireman, Sean Garcia, Tom King, Brenda Talley, Dave Henzi and Bob Esterl) and two new Assistant Deans, Drs. Deborah Conway and Michael Johnson.
The coming months promise to be busy, but fruitful and rewarding, as curricular changes are introduced and evaluated. The atmosphere is charged with positive energy produced by communication and collaboration. As we have said on many occasions: ultimately, this process will lead to a better and stronger medical school.
With our warmest regards,
Francisco González-Scarano, M.D. Florence (Flossy) Eddins-Folensbee, M.D.
Dean, School of Medicine Vice Dean of Undergraduate Medical Education
Vice President for Medical Affairs Sr. Associate Dean for Students
Professor of Neurology Professor of Psychiatry
