Students

Chair: Christopher Parrino, MS2

The student workgroup focused on three areas; career development, learning environment, and wellness. For career development, we recommend a major overhaul to the timing and/or requirements of the clinical years to ensure optimal exposure to as many specialties as possible, as well as thoughtful changes to existing structures (House mentorship, Introduction to Clinical Medicine, longitudinal tracks and threads) to provide more opportunities for medical students. Regarding learning, given that Step 1 performance is a top priority for pre-clerkship students and plays an important role in their future, the redesigned learning and assessment environment should account for this while also preparing our students for success in clinical rotations and beyond. We suggest creation of an assessment review committee to make sure students are being tested on what they are taught and that the assessments reflect NBME standards. In addition, we believe that active teaching methodology should be incorporated into all years of the curriculum. Finally, to improve wellness, we recommend that the attendance policy and exam schedule be optimized, and additional resources be directed to overall student wellbeing including financial literacy. We also support the stratified pass-fail system proposed by the assessment group as this would facilitate a less stressful environment for the students.