Attendance
Voting Members: Heather Harrell (Chair), Anita Rajasekhar, Christopher Robinson, Jason Fromm, Jennifer Fieber, Melanie Hagen, Norman Beatty, Reetu Grewal, Robert Seifert, Ryan Nall, Velyn Wu.
Ex-Officio: Ashleigh Wright, Austin Edwards (MS2), Beverly Dede, Carrie Adams, Chris Giordano, Collen Kalynych, Dani Brown, Diane Howell, Elizabeth DeVos, Hannah Norton, Jennifer Hamilton, Jim Gorske, Kathy Green, Lynne Meyer, Marquia Walker, Maureen Novak, Melissa Turley, Meredith Thompson, Phuong Huynh, Shelley Collins. Guests: Maryam Sattari, MD, Christiana Shaw, MD
Recording: Sandi Reveille
Dr. Harrell called the meeting to order at 7:32am.
1. A motion was made to approve the consent agenda, seconded, and approved.
2. Vote required
a. Sunset Phase 1 Student Performance subcommittee
This subcommittee was formed in September 2022 to help students who were not failing courses but were struggling academically. Subsequently, the Office of Student Affairs has expanded its resources including added 2 coaches who will take over leading this work.
Motion to sunset the Phase 1 student performance subcommittee of the Course Directors Committee.
Motion was seconded and approved.
b. Proposal to move subspeciality electives from Surgery Clerkship decreasing it from 8 to 6 weeks, adding 2- week procedure-based elective requirement
Students have been requesting more elective opportunities in the 3rd year, which has been discussed at the last 2 clerkship director retreats. June 2024 the surgery clerkship requested that the 2-week subspecialty selective portion of the clerkship become P/F due to challenges obtaining timely and discriminating evaluations from surgical subspecialty departments. This was approved because the clerkship learning objectives could be met without the selectives. Thus, this was identified as an opportunity to expand elective offerings by transitioning the 2-week selectives to 3rd year electives and decreasing the Surgery Clerkship to 6 weeks and only include specialties within the Department of General Surgery. Dr. Shaw indicated that the 2-week electives should be in a procedural specialty. At the meeting Dr. Shaw gave a presentation raising concerns about NBME preparation* and the effect on small group teaching sessions. Other members of the committee expressed concern about this as well.
No motion was made and the proposal was tabled.
*The NBME tracks this data and surgical clerkship length has no effect on subject exam performance.
c. Step 1
Recommended adding requirement to pass Step 1 exam within 2 years of completion of Phase 1 curriculum in order to continue in medical school.
Rationale is students who get too far out from the Phase 1 curriculum would essentially need to repeat Phase 1, which is not an option. Also, some states have requirements about the length of time allowed in completing the Step exams for licensing.
Clarified Students for Additional Testing changed to Students in Need of Additional CBSE/CBSSA. Additional clarification: Students who do not make the benchmark in time to take Step 1 before the beginning of clerkship orientation will participate in orientation but delay the first clerkship and have a monitored individual study plan approved by the Academic Status Committee. These students must retake the CBSE or CBSSA and score at or above the historical equivalent Step 1 passing score to be sponsored for USMLE Step 1.
Motion to require passage of Step 1 within 2-years of the completion of Phase 1 and to add proposed clarifying language about clerkship orientation requirements and students who need additional testing.
Motion was seconded and approved.
d. Unsatisfactory performance
Adding competencies to demonstration of academic success for removal from Academic Concern to align with Academic Probation policy.
Motion to approve.
Motion was seconded and approved.
3. Course Director Retreat Update
- Challenges: decline in student attendance; suboptimal performance on CBSE (not retaining information); students relying on 3rd party resources
- Addressing challenges: interleaving; active learning; cumulative assessment; planned redundancy.
- Steps to goals: cumulative questions make up 5% of assessment questions; develop high-quality question bank; deliver 30% of material in an active learning format; course directors identified challenging topics to be revisited (or previewed) in other courses.
- Tools available to use with active learning reviewed: Kahoots, Iclicker, Poleverywhere, Quizizz, Padlet.
- Update on AI Tools for Course Directors to meet new goals
4. Discovery Tracks overview (58:35)
Discussed “What constitutes a discovery pathway and what is the ideal number of discovery pathways?”
Discovery Tracks are structured tracks that faculty put together to enrich our medical students learning experience outside of the curriculum. The pathway tracks are designed to cover content that applies across different specialties not an exploration of specialties or subspecialties as we have interest groups for that. Tracks should be open to all medical students. UF currently has 12 pathways. There was brief discussion as to whether the number should be limited to 10 pathways. Potentials concerns related to QUIPs being designed for subset of students (MD/PhD), Surgical Mentorship potentially overlapping too much with career development.
Next steps:
- Draft guidelines for Discovery Track requirements and separation of related 4th year electives
- Review pathways with potential concerns
5. CPESA report
Presented the mid-year review of 3rd year clerkships (Family Medicine, Geriatrics, Medicine, OBGYN, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Surgery)
- Overall Summary of Strengths
- Overall Summary of Areas to Monitor
- Dashboard – summary of data from clerkship evaluation
- Quality of overall educational experience
- Comparison of grade distributions from May 2023 -October 2023/May 2024 – October 2024
- Key items to focus on the 2nd half of the clerkship year:
- Standardization of midpoint feedback processes
- Enhance consistency across sites
- Address mistreatment and inclusiveness concerns
- Improve grading consistency and address subjectivity
6. SADEA
Launch a new strategic planning process for Educational Affairs. How we want to educate our students as we look towards the future (first year students will not be practicing for 7 years). What do we want to be known for? Process will take approximately 15 to 18 months and will be an ongoing process and will involve everyone (all divisions).
7.Good News
Provide good news happenings for College of Medicine faculty, residents, students