New Medical Pathway Taking Shape

Two years after an innovative program to give students a more humane medical education was first proposed by the Medical School Faculty, organizers have taken several important strides to ready the program for introduction in the fall of 1985.

The faculty of the school approved the first draft of the actual proposal, called New Pathways, in June, and now coordinators have begun recruiting professors, shaping the curriculum, and discussing some of the nuts and bolts of the program.

"There's a tremendous amount of excitement. It's a very exciting time for the development of the program." Dean for Students and Alumni Dr. Daniel D. Federman said yesterday. He is also chairman of the Faculty Development committee, which is responsible for helping teachers adapt their methods for the new program.

The program features a case-based method, emphasizing self-learning, smaller classes, limited lectures, and increased contact with patients.

Modeled on a pioneering system at the McMaster medical school in Toronto, the New Pathway will be one of the first American medical programs to teach through case examples, which have been used at the Harvard Business School for decades.

As part of its much-publicized goal of of training doctors to be more humane, a goal President Bok stressed in his 1984 annual report, on medical education, the program will emphasize increased contact with patients.

Such contact is fundamental to the program and "really is the essence of medicine," said the program's curriculum coordinator, Eleanor McLoughlin.

To this end, a committee named specifically to examine the importance of the patient is trying to develop ways in which students can better understand their clients.

"We've been trying hard to integrate the social and behavioral sciences with the medical sciences," said Davidson Professor of Medicine Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, the committee's chairman, who added that the doctors hope to "heighten the students awareness of the patient's experience."

Though students will gain much of this understanding from readings, the coordinators also expect them to learn on the job Lawrence said students must understand that the experience of patients "relies on their cultural, religious, social, familial, and personal world view."

Because it is impossible to prepare adequately for the nuances of treating each patient, the system is designed so that students must do much of their learning on their own, said Mary Jo Litchard, administrative assistant for the program.

The initial outline calls for students to spend 40 percent of their working hours on individualized, self-directed study, coordinators say.

Working in groups of five to seven per preceptor, the students will use other teachers as "consultants," seeking them out as they discover they need certain knowledge.

"This is an integrated curriculum. Nothing is taught in blocks, such as anatomy. You don't just take a course in anatomy--you study a case. In learning about the disease in a particular case, you learn the anatomy of the heart or the stomach," Litchard added.