Future patient-centered care depends on current student-centered education. If family medicine educators and preceptors can apply that principle to their interactions with medical students, the specialty will have a strong workforce, said one of family medicine's most renowned representatives recently.
Training Program 'Walks the Walk' of Specialty's Core Values
By Leslie Champlin
• Columbus, Ohio
4/21/2006
"The spark is still out there," Linda Stone, M.D., tells participants at the recent Ohio AFP Mega Spring Event.
The speaker, Linda Stone, M.D., of Columbus, Ohio, is a clinical associate professor of family medicine at Ohio State University College of Medicine. She shared her experience in student recruitment with 20 family medicine residency faculty members during the Ohio AFP Mega Spring Event in March. The three-day conference brought medical students, family medicine residents and faculty together to share information, research and experiences.
"The spark is still out there. It's alive and well in our students," Stone said. But preceptors and educators must "teach like we practice, with the student at the core of what we do. Look for students who are ready, and then be ready for them, not with what you need but with what the student needs."
Stone said her department turned to the students themselves to identify initiatives that communicate the core values of and opportunities in family medicine. When implementing those initiatives, the department uses a cascading mentorship program in which faculty members help residents, residents help medical students and medical students help undergraduates interested in physician careers.
Working with the family medicine interest group at Ohio State University, the department established
"The spark is still out there. It's alive and well in our students," Stone said. But preceptors and educators must "teach like we practice, with the student at the core of what we do. Look for students who are ready, and then be ready for them, not with what you need but with what the student needs."
Stone said her department turned to the students themselves to identify initiatives that communicate the core values of and opportunities in family medicine. When implementing those initiatives, the department uses a cascading mentorship program in which faculty members help residents, residents help medical students and medical students help undergraduates interested in physician careers.
Working with the family medicine interest group at Ohio State University, the department established
- a program that consists of premedical interest group meetings in which medical student panelists talk about the medical school admissions process, stress management, research opportunities and other requested topics;
- family medicine interest group activities that include student-initiated community service projects, a quarterly newsletter with advice columns for second- and third-year medical students, leadership roundtables, and a sports medicine interest group;
- a professionalism project that incorporates a patient-centered medicine curriculum, introduces medical students to family medicine's approach to professionalism and provides information on maintaining professional well-being;
- a family medicine leadership development program that focuses on third- and fourth-year medical students and that includes a research interest group, a legislative action group, student-designed curriculum, a journal club, an honors program, and promotion of urban and rural health opportunities;
- special activities that include a "Welcome to the family of family physicians" picnic, a celebration of the National Resident Matching Program's "Match" day, an honors program reception and family medicine department awards; and
- a residency connection program that links family medicine residents to students and maintains connections between residents and the medical school.
Stone's program succeeds because it helps identify students who share family medicine's core values and enables faculty to teach by example.
"The compassion, the caring, the wanting to provide continuity of care, of being there for their patients -- that's all there," she said. "And students are learning the essentials from family physicians. We don't teach the same way as others. We teach with the patient as the context. We understand the bigger approach to medicine, and many students understand that that's where their heart lies. For many students, we are the inspiration."
"The compassion, the caring, the wanting to provide continuity of care, of being there for their patients -- that's all there," she said. "And students are learning the essentials from family physicians. We don't teach the same way as others. We teach with the patient as the context. We understand the bigger approach to medicine, and many students understand that that's where their heart lies. For many students, we are the inspiration."
