Student wellness: Blueprints for the curriculum of the future

The focus on wellness in medical education is growing, and it’s motivating students and faculty to search for the path to the wellness-centered learning environment of the future. Several submissions to the AMA Medical Education Innovation Challenge, which encouraged students around the nation to upend the traditional medical school curriculum with outside-the-box ideas, and projects within the AMA Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium emphasize student wellness. The goal is to create physicians who are better equipped to take care of themselves and therefore able to serve patients throughout the course of their medical careers. Building health for the healer A team of students from the University of Louisville School of Medicine, which placed third in the Innovation Challenge, set out an ambitious goal to forge “an ideal version of medical education.” In their proposal, “Happy healers, healthy humans: A wellness curricular model as a means of effecting cultural change, reducing burnout and improving patient outcomes,” the four team members said the current environment is stressful and self-awareness, empathy and communication skills suffer. Their vision is of a medical school curriculum with an emphasis on student wellness comprised of physical, mental and spiritual health. Under their curriculum, students build coping and self-care skills with goal-setting groups, reflection and cognitive behavioral therapy. This vision even includes re...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news