At this year's Stanford Medicine X, executive director Larry Chu, MD, announced the launch of a new group of initiatives that would expand the conference and “quicken the pace of changing the culture of health care.” In addition to continuing to build community, the Medicine X Academy will aim to use technology, the principles of design thinking, and a model of inclusivity to redefine medical education.
"We’re moving from talking to doing," said Chu. "We want to move the conversation earlier into the education system so students begin to think differently about health care and [so we can] improve medical education with the input of all stakeholders."
As part of the academy, Chu, Kyle Harrison, MD, clinical assistant professor at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Hospital, and Nikita Joshi, MD, an academic fellow at Stanford, will begin teaching a massive open online course (MOOC) course titled "Medical Education in the New Millennium" this Thursday. Anyone can enroll in the class through Stanford OpenEdX. Additionally, it will be webcasted on the Medicine X website and live tweeted on the @StanfordMedX feed.
The eleven-week course will ask the fundamental question: What is the definition of medical education? Participants will explore a variety of topics including how to improve the educational experiences of today's Millennial medical students and residents; how patients and caregivers can be active participants in their care teams; how MOOCs, social media, simulation and virtual reality change the face of medical education; and how to make learning continuous, engaging, and scalable in an age of increasing clinical demands and limited work hours.
Among the class guest lectures are Charles Prober, MD, senior associate dean for medical education at Stanford; Kirsten Ostherr, PhD, an English professor at Rice University and co-founder of the Medical Futures Lab; ePatient Britt Johnson; and medical and nursing students from Duke, Stanford and other universities.
As noted on the course website, the course is targeted not only towards medical students and educators but also patients, caregivers, and anyone who wants "to join a conversation about how to improve medical education."
Previously: Medicine X aims to “fill the gaps” in medical education, Rethinking the traditional four-year medical curriculum and A closer look at using the “flipped classroom” model at the School of Medicine
Photo of Charles Prober by EdTech Stanford University
