Overview of the Colleges

Goals:

The Colleges have three primary goals:

To oversee a four-year integrated curriculum of clinical skills and professionalism;
To teach the Introduction to Clinical Medicine II (ICM II) course in the second year;
To provide a consistent faculty mentor to each student throughout her/his medical school career.

Structure:

There are five Colleges within the School of Medicine, each with six faculty, one of whom serves as the head of the College. Students are randomly assigned upon matriculation to one of the five Colleges, and specifically to one faculty mentor within that College. Each College mentor will be assigned six students and will work with them throughout their medical school career. Each College will have a total of 144- 150 students.

Each College is named for a “natural wonder” in one of the five WWAMI states:

Big Sky ( Montana), Denali ( Alaska), Rainier ( Washington), Snake River ( Idaho),

Wind River ( Wyoming). Each College has a special link to its state and will serve as the liaison with both the first year and the clinical sites of that state. The students from a given first-year site are assigned throughout the five Colleges. We hope eventually, with your help, to prepare material about each state, its geology and natural resources, its history, its people, its cultures, and the history of its medical communities. We hope that students from each state will be interested in contributing to this effort regardless of which College they are assigned to. We see these histories as a part of our entire school, and envision the Colleges as being the custodians and links to their states.

Content:

One of the main responsibilities of the Colleges is to oversee a four-year integrated curriculum of clinical skills and professionalism. There are five areas of clinical skills with developmental benchmarks identified for each year:

Communication skills, including taking a patient history;
Clinical reasoning and interpretation skills;
Diagnostic and physical exam skills;
Professionalism and ethics;
Use of informatics.

Although they are described uniquely, there is considerable overlap between the five areas. The developmental benchmarks for each year in each area included in this orientation material were outlined by a working group during the curriculum review process and are in general form. As you move through your medical school training, you will be provided with more specific, detailed benchmarks in the various areas. We are continually reviewing these benchmarks to refine and deepen them and enhance their usefulness in helping students identify appropriate learning goals for each academic quarter or clerkship.

Each student will use a web-based educational learning portfolio to document his or her work and progress in the skills development curriculum. This will enable students and their mentors to monitor progress in specific areas against defined benchmarks throughout the four years and provide appropriate guidance. The portfolio will include, for example, students’ learning goals and self-assessments of progress, samples of their write-ups, “reflections” on various elements of the curriculum, skills practice logs, and copies of their evaluations of performance. The College mentors will also have access to their students’ academic files and will receive copies of letters sent to their students regarding their academic progress and modifications in their academic plans.

One of the elements of the four-year clinical skills curriculum that is monitored within the College system is a new continuity curriculum. The goal of this curriculum is to demonstrate the importance of continuity of care for patients and physicians, regardless of specialty. In the preclinical years, there is a “patient-centered” and a “physician-centered” component of this curriculum. In first year, this continuity curriculum is integrated into the ICM I course. You will receive detailed information about these components and the logistics of this curriculum. Your College mentor will review these requirements with you and help you achieve the objectives.

The College system is the focus of mentoring and counseling for the students. This includes quarterly face-to-face (or video conference) meetings; regular check-in via phone or email to monitor student progress and completion of required components of the curriculum (maintained in student portfolios); academic and career counseling; and facilitation of peer counseling meetings with students from all years of training.

At the end of the second year and again at the end of third year or beginning of the fourth year, the students will undergo a clinical skills performance evaluation that must be completed satisfactorily before they can continue on to the next stage of training (i.e., clinical training in third year or graduation and transition to residency training).

In addition to mentoring and counseling from the College faculty, students within the Colleges will provide advice and support to one another. Two times each quarter, two faculty from each College will meet with their students from all four years to provide an opportunity for peer counseling.

What Happens in the First Year

In this packet is material regarding each of the areas noted above. We ask that you review this information and note any questions that you have about the organization and structure of the Colleges and their role in your education. Your assigned College mentor will be contacting you in the next several weeks to introduce him or herself and will send you a brief biography. The two of you will set up a time for your first meeting. Your College mentor will already have been provided with a copy of your AMCAS application personal statement. Prior to your first meeting, we ask that you prepare a brief biography of your own to send to your mentor-- an “addendum” to your personal statement to provide a fuller picture of who you are. In addition, we ask that you review the clinical skills developmental benchmarks and draft your own learning goals for Autumn Quarter or Fall Semester. (The “feedback forms” used in the ICM I course provide a more in-depth description of the skills benchmarks and may be helpful in developing your learning goals.)

In summary, your tasks are to:

Prepare your own brief biography as an update/addendum to your AMCAS statement. This is an opportunity to share your experiences over the past year, any changes in your thinking, or just additional information about yourself.

Review the “Clinical Skills and Professionalism Benchmarks” included in this packet and write a brief description of your own learning goals in each of the five areas for Autumn Quarter or Fall Semester of your first year.

These two items are the first two items for your portfolio. Other items that will go into your learning portfolio this year include your one or two best write-ups each quarter or semester (or all of your write-ups if you wish), and the written reflections that are part of your continuity requirement. Your College mentors welcome your comments, suggestions, reflections, and writings about any aspect of your experience throughout the year.