Frequently Asked Questions

MED 2010: Frequently asked questions

Q. What is MED 2010?

A. MED 2010, learner-centered medical education for patient-centered care, is an initiative to transform medical education. Students will have the opportunity to tailor their school experiences to their individual talents and personal goals. Students’ mastery of competencies (see below), guided by faculty mentors and attained through a choice of experiences, will be evaluated to individually determine their progress in medical education.

Q. Why is this effort to transform medical education taking place at Minnesota?

A. The University of Minnesota’s Medical School was cited in the Flexner Report (1910) as a school that had taken the lead in establishing an up-to-date medical education to serve the needs of the state. Today, we still strive to be national leaders in medical education, ensuring that our future physicians benefit from an education that meets or exceeds current test and licensing standards, while providing them with a forward-looking approach that encourages leadership and continuous quality improvement.

Q. Is MED 2010 at the U of M an isolated effort or are other medical schools also embarking on similar efforts to transform medical education?

A. While MED 2010 is our medical school’s response to the growing nationwide recognition that medical education needs to change, other schools and institutions also have launched their own efforts. Some of our pilot programs are collaborative. Guidance for these initiatives comes from such nation- and profession-wide institutions as the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s competencies (approved in 1999), and the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Institute for Improving Medical Education (established in 2002).

Q. When does it start?

A. Some initiatives, such as e-portfolios and the flexible M.D., are already underway. The first pilot of one-on-one e-portfolio-based mentoring for first year students began with the matriculating class of 2011 in fall 2007. It is expected that by fall 2008, educational pilot programs will be launched in other areas and studied for their effectiveness. Planning MED 2010 began a few years ago and is an ongoing process.

Q. Will MED 2010 affect applications for residency?

A. In the long run, we expect MED 2010 to have a positive effect on our medical students’ applications for residencies. They potentially will have a head start on demonstrating to residency programs that they are mastering the competencies of a physician.

Q. What is an e-portfolio?

A. An e-portfolio is an electronic tool to upload, store, and share information about academic and personal pursuits. It supports life-long learning, as it can be used to track progress during the course of a career in medicine, from medical student to resident to practitioner.

Q. How will the e-portfolio help our medical students in the future, when they are practicing physicians?

A. We are educating physicians for a future we cannot entirely predict. Yet we think the e-portfolio is a flexible tool essential for professional and personal use. Portions of a portfolio can be shared with others, as desired, while portions also may remain private. With this adaptability, it can serve at least two major needs of future physicians. First, today’s physicians are being evaluated on their patients’ outcomes: measures of care that can be quantified. An e-portfolio gives future physicians a place to store their measures and to share them as needed with colleagues or employers. Secondly, future physicians may use e-portfolios to develop the habit of reflection with the goal of improving their care, their work with other members of the health-care team, or the operations of their health care system.

Q. What is the Flexible M.D.?

A. In fall 2005, we began to offer medical students a flexible M.D. program, in which they may complete their M.D. over three-and-one-half to six years, and pay for only 11 semesters of tuition. The flexible M.D. opens up possibilities for students seeking to build an individualized education. For example, students in good academic standing may, in collaboration with a staff or faculty member, create a research portfolio, work in underserved communities in the U.S. or abroad, or pursue study in a health-related discipline.

Q. What are competencies?

A. A competency is a complex set of behaviors that integrates knowledge, skills and attitudes. It offers a 1,000-foot perspective; one example is: Solve clinical problems using deductive reasoning. This broad statement implies a physician has a solid foundation in scientific information, the clinical understanding to ask appropriate questions, a solution-oriented perspective, and the ability to synthesize. A competent physician would demonstrate all these attributes. This one competency actually consolidates numerous related sub-competencies and objectives. By drilling down to these objectives, evaluators may reach a level of detail where individual behaviors can be meaningfully measured.

Q. MED 2010 may well bend or break the mold of traditional large lecture learning in the first years of medical school. But what will happen to students who are more comfortable with that style than with small-group learning?

A. Recognizing and accommodating differences in learning is one of the goals of MED 2010. Yet, we believe that the future of health-care delivery is in team care; a physician is increasingly less likely to operate solo. So all future physicians ought to learn the give-and-take needed for effective teamwork.

Q. What are the expected benefits of MED 2010?

A. We expect to launch excellent future physicians, driven to serve their patients and their communities and prepared to critically assess themselves and their health-care systems with an eye to improvement.

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