Personalized Medicine in Undergraduate Medical Education: a Spiral Learning Model
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SHORT COMMUNICATION
Personalized Medicine in Undergraduate Medical Education: a Spiral Learning Model Jessica A. Chacon 1 & Jorge L. Cervantes 1 & Cynthia N. Perry 1 & Curt M. Pfarr 1 & Houriya Ayoubieh 1
# International Association of Medical Science Educators 2020
Abstract Educational strategies to introduce medical students to scientific advances are needed as evidence continues to evolve regarding their clinical application in personalized medicine. Our overall project goal is to design an evidence-based, clinically relevant, personalized medicine curriculum spanning the 4 years of undergraduate medical education. Keywords Personalized medicine . Scientific frontiers . Scientific advances . Undergraduate medical education
Background Despite efforts to introduce cutting-edge biomedical advances into undergraduate medical curricula, only a small percentage of medical students feel that their education has prepared them for an era of personalized medicine [1]. While the majority of undergraduate programs include genomic topics in the first 2 years, personalized medicine content is included in only 21% of curricula [2]. Along with an individual’s genomic make-up, personalized medicine takes into account additional environmental factors that could shape one’s health [3]. Therefore, we will use the term personalized medicine, instead of genomic medicine, to describe this intervention. Many physicians feel unprepared and are reluctant to apply scientific advances to everyday practice [4, 5]. Furthermore, integration of basic science and emerging research throughout the undergraduate medical curriculum continues to be a strategic priority of most institutions. However, barriers to provide such content include heavy student academic workload and insufficient instruction regarding scientific research [6, 7]. One approach to increase student exposure to personalized medicine is to incorporate a curricular thread spanning the entire 4 years of undergraduate medical education (UME) [8]. Here, we describe the design of a spiral learning approach
to provide such content and our experience implementing three pilot activities.
Activity The Paul L. Foster School of Medicine (PLFSOM) offers a highly integrated curriculum across the 4 years of UME. Our goal is to develop 5 sessions covering scientific advances in personalized medicine. Three of these will be embedded within the preclinical years, with an additional session in year 3 and an elective course offered in year 4. These will integrate into our existing curriculum using a spiral learning model by building on foundational concepts with progressively deeper content coverage [9, 10]. Previously acquired knowledge of genomic and environmental factors will be reviewed through increasingly complex patient scenarios that apply nextgeneration sequencing, stem cell therapy, biomarkers, and immunotherapy. These will be led by a panel of discipline experts in the fields of biochemistry, cell biology, clinical genetics, internal medicine, immunology, and microbiology, to mirror
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