Welcome
Letter From The Editor
We don’t build each issue of HMI WORLD around a common theme, but sometimes those themes emerge on their own. The theme that jumps out in the November-December 2007 issue is outputs.
Feature Stories
In Japan, TMDU drives to become “a university for society”
Ten faculty from Tokyo Medical & Dental University (TMDU) came to Boston in October for a five-day faculty development program on clinical teaching and clerkship design. This faculty group is part of TMDU’s efforts to institute curricular and organizational reforms aimed at producing graduates who are adept problem-solvers and communicators. By creating more interactive learning environments, TMDU has enhanced the vigor and attractiveness of its education programs, positioning the school to excel in an increasingly competitive Japanese education market.
Since beginning its partnership with HMI, TMDU has made steady improvements. Its applicants rank third among Japanese medical universities, and its students score best in the country on the national examination.
In September, HMI’s Tom Aretz, MD, Vice President of Global Programs, and Elizabeth Armstrong, PhD, Director of Education Programs, visited TMDU to review five years of collaboration and discuss future strategy. They met with members of the TMDU leadership as well as faculty involved in implementing educational models for problem-based learning and new clinical clerkships.
Armstrong said the September visit was an opportunity for the partners to look at the objectives set forth at the beginning of this partnership, in 2002, and evaluate their progress. The HMI-TMDU collaboration has focused on five broad categories of activities, with a number of notable outputs:
Curriculum development: TMDU has made major strides in developing and implementing a curriculum that emphasizes problem-solving skills and communication over rote memorization of content. They have rolled out several new courses built around problem-based learning, built new clerkships, and launched a patient-doctor course modeled after the one used at Harvard Medical School.
Organizational structure development: TMDU has transitioned its curriculum development committee into an education maintenance committee. The curriculum reform initiative began with several working groups focused on different areas; the sole remaining working group is the one charged with clerkship development.
Faculty development: Programs to enhance faculty and leadership skills have been a staple of the partnership. Five courses in Boston have trained 55 TMDU faculty to date; more than 300 TMDU faculty have participated in programs in Tokyo led by faculty from HMI and Ludwig Maximilians University. And TMDU has created its own faculty development program, with more than a thousand faculty participating since its inception.
International exchanges: Four Harvard Medical School faculty have served as visiting professors at TMDU during the last year. TMDU has also supported a popular exchange program that has enabled 24 students to complete clerkships at HMS in the last four years. The school’s efforts to revamp the structure and format of its clinical training have drawn in part on input from these students. Clifford Lo, MD, MPH, one of the HMS professors to teach at TMDU, reports, “Much progress has been made in getting students to take a more proactive role in patient care teams during their four-week clinical rotations.”
Evaluation and assessment: One of TMDU’s main concerns when the partnership with HMI began was the lack of evaluation of teaching activities. The reforms to the curriculum necessitated the development of evaluation and assessment methods to match the new teaching and learning methods. HMI and TMDU have focused on integrating evaluation and assessment into every component of teaching, including assessment of students and clinical tutors.
During the September visit, TMDU faculty leader Yujiro Tanaka, MD emphasized to the HMI team that the school’s overarching goal is to “create a university for society.” The leadership of TMDU are looking years ahead at key issues in Japan that they will need to address, such as the chronic care needs of the country’s growing elderly population, disparities between care in rural and urban communities, and the shortage of physician-scientists.
More Featrured Stories
New leadership for HMI
Andrew A. Jeon, MD, MBA has been appointed Acting President and Chief Executive Officer of HMI. Dr. Jeon succeeds Robert K. Crone, MD, who served as HMI’s founding President and Chief Executive Officer starting in 1994.
“World-Class” gathering for HMI partners, faculty, and community
HMI partners from as near as Baltimore and as far as Singapore converged in Boston at the end of September for a two-day global health forum focused on current trends and challenges in achieving health care and education excellence
Four-year collaboration enhances emergency medicine training for Italian physicians
Hundreds of physicians from hospitals throughout the region of Tuscany have completed a newly created emergency medicine training program that provides standardized training in this specialty for the first time in Italy
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HMI-Wockhardt Interactive Timeline: Visit the HMI Main Website to view a new interactive timeline detailing the history of HMI’s collaborative partnership with Wockhardt Hospitals Limited (Mumbai, India).
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