Instruction and Education
In the area of Instruction and Education, we are deeply engaged in the College’s new and impactful Shared Discovery Curriculum. Our medical students learn about human health and its determinants in an entirely new fashion. From the beginning, students get to interact with the entire care team, not just the medical providers. This gives them a better appreciation of the complexity of the modern healthcare delivery system, and ensures that they are ready to become effective, competent, and compassionate practitioners once they have completed their basic and residency training and moved on to become full-fledged providers. Rigorous evaluation of the new curriculum suggests that the training enhances the student’s learning experiences and outcomes. I am very happy that several of our department’s faculty members played a central role in developing and implementing the curriculum and will continue those leadership roles as the curriculum further develops.
In collaboration with our hospital partners, we offer The Integrated Program (TIP). This program and its accompanying scholarship award offers fourth year CHM students committed to a career in family medicine the opportunity to integrate academically, clinically, and socially into a residency program in one of our communities. TIP has proven to be a “win-win” for students, residencies, and sponsoring institutions, all of whom value the community-focused integration into primary care, scholarship, and leadership development.
The Department is the hub for the unique and statewide network of family medicine residencies. The network is once again expanding and by 2018, there will be ten different residencies, representing some 234 family medicine residents in the network. The network stretches from southeast Michigan to the Upper Peninsula, and offers an unprecedented opportunity for collaboration in support of excellence in terms of residency training, scholarship, and in addressing the constantly changing health care environment.
We have also been essential to the growth of MSU-CHM’s rural medicine curriculum. Through the combination of our network of rural family medicine residency programs, the MSU-CHM Leadership in Rural Medicine Certificate program, rural clinical experiences statewide with family medicine preceptors, and the Rural Premedical Internship Program we have positioned ourselves as a national leader in rural medical education.
The Department provides expertise in geriatric care and education. Geriatric specialty services span the continuum from hospital consultation to nursing home care at multiple sites within the greater Lansing service area. The faculty have a strong commitment to training fellows in the Sparrow/MSU geriatric medicine fellowship program and teaching geriatrics to family and internal medicine residents, medical students, and allied health professionals. Geriatric research initiatives are broad in scope and will influence ongoing efforts to strengthen the workforce of health professionals engaged in education, research, health policy advancement, and modification of care systems for older people.
