Advances in Medical Education and Practice (Aug 2024)
A Clinically Immersive Medical Innovation Program for US MD Students: Curricular Description and Program Outcomes
Abstract
David A Zarrin,1 Li Zhou2 1David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USACorrespondence: David A Zarrin, University of California Los Angeles, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA, Tel +408-438-8127, Email [email protected]: There is growing need for physician-innovators to address the mounting challenges within the US healthcare system. Despite this, there remains a significant gap in understanding of the efficacy of innovation programs for US MD candidates. We present initial program outcomes of a novel, clinically immersive medical innovation program offered to MD candidates at the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) at UCLA.Methods: A novel clinically immersive medical innovation curriculum was developed based on existing and reputable medical innovation frameworks and tailored for medical students. Curricular topics broadly included clinical ethnography, interviewing techniques, mind mapping, needs formulation and prioritization, quality improvement, intellectual property, reimbursement pathways, solution landscaping and prioritization, regulatory processes. The program was trialed during an unscheduled summer with voluntary enrollees from DGSOM Class of 2024. The traditional four-level Kirkpatrick model was employed to assess program outcomes.Results: Program outcomes were positive on all four Kirkpatrick levels. Students rated enjoyment at 9.5/10 for lectures and 9.1/10 for clinical immersion. Student-perceived confidence in key skills increased by 43%, and 75% of faculty directly perceived improvement in ethnographic skills. Students were highly engaged in both didactics and clinical immersion, discovering on average 2.6 faculty-verified needs per week. Faculty largely felt their students discovered important unmet clinical needs and added value to their clinical practice.Conclusion: We developed and trialed a novel clinically immersive medical innovation curriculum tailored for medical students. This program achieved positive outcomes on all four levels of the Kirkpatrick model. Our findings have driven the local adoption of this program into our institution’s medical school curriculum. We hope that the program efficacy demonstrated herein catalyzes more institutions to trial similar medical innovation programs.Plain Language Summary: We conducted this investigation after recent literature identified a significant gap in our understanding of the role of innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) programs in the United States (US) medical education. I&E programs are meant to teach the skills necessary to identify and assess ongoing challenges in health care and subsequently formulate a solution for such challenges. The rate of adoption of I&E programs into US medical education has been unexplainably slow, despite a strong reported interest among medical students in learning the associated topics. We sought to answer the question: how effectively can an I&E curriculum be integrated into the traditional US medical doctorate (M.D). curriculum? We designed a novel medical innovation program tailored for medical students and offered this six-week program to 16 M.D. candidates at UCLA during an unscheduled summer. By describing the curriculum in detail and presenting our holistic assessment of program outcomes including learners’ feeling, learnings, transference of knowledge, and the program’s real-world impact, we demonstrate methods by which medical innovation can effectively be taught to medical students and the impact this may have on our future physician workforce. Our implementation of a quality improvement conceptual framework examining multiple process measures enabled iterative and real-time improvement of the program throughout its offering. Our surveys were administered at regular intervals through the course, thereby allowing iterative feedback from enrolled students to drive course improvement, similar to how quality improvement frameworks incrementally improve outcomes through closed-loop feedback in health care settings. We posit that analogous medical innovation curricula should be increasingly integrated into MD curricula more broadly.Keywords: medical education, medical innovation, ethnography, clinical needs, Kirkpatrick model
