Guest Speaker:

Danny M. Takanishi, Jr., MD, FACS
Professor of Surgery, Associate General Surgery Residency Program Director
University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine

Elements of the Month:

Element 4.6 (responsibility for educational program policies)
Element 7.3 (scientific method/clinical/ translational research)
Element 12.4 (student access to health care services)

Presentation Slides: May 18, 2017 Connecting with the Secretariat Webinar

Submitted Questions for Guest Speaker

1. Element 7.3: Does every student need to be engaged in bench/translational research to meet this element? Or can students be engaged in medical research (including public health, clinical research), in which they employ the scientific method (“including hands-on or simulated exercises in which medical students collect or use data to test and/or verify hypotheses or address questions about biomedical phenomena”) to satisfy the intent of the element?
2. How should appraisal of evidence (including clinical research) and application to patient/clinical care be differentiated between DCI questions 7.3b and 7.4a?

General Questions for the LCME Secretariat

1. Are schools expected to provide regular (annual?) feedback to tenured faculty?
2. Element 6.1: Element 6.1-1 requires us to “demonstrate the relationship” between general competencies and “medical education program objectives, and the outcome measure(s) specifically used to access students’ attainment of each related objective and competency.” Can you elaborate on how to effectively demonstrate this relationship and provide an example of how the relationship between a general competency and a program objective can be sufficiently demonstrated?
3. The final sentence Element 3.5 (LEARNING ENVIRONMENT/PROFESSIONALISM) states “The medical school and its clinical affiliates share the responsibility for periodic evaluation of the learning environment in order to identify positive and negative influences on the maintenance of professional standards, develop and conduct appropriate strategies to enhance positive and mitigate negative influences, and identify and promptly correct violations of professional standards.” Supporting documentation asks for a description of the methods used. Could you please elaborate on what is expected?  For example: What are the expectations related to school initiated evaluations of the learning environment, especially in the clinical settings? To what extent can the results from the Y2Q and GQ be a part of this process?  Is there a preferred frequency for school initiated evaluations?  Are there specific aspects that should be reviewed to identify positive and negative influences?   Are there specific evaluation approaches that have been most successful?