Curricular integration of social medicine: a prospective for medical educators.

In the United States, the health of a community falls on a continuum ranging from healthy to unhealthy and fluctuates based on several variables. Research policy and public health practice literature report substantial disparities in life expectancy, morbidity, risk factors, and quality of life, as well as persistence of these disparities among segments of the population. One such way to close this gap is to streamline medical education to better prepare our future physicians for our patients in underserved communities. Medical schools have the potential to close the gap when training future physicians by providing them with the principles of social medicine that can contribute to the reduction of health disparities. Curriculum reform and systematic formative assessment and evaluative measures can be developed to match social medicine and health disparities curricula for individual medical schools, thus assuring that future physicians are being properly prepared for residency and the workforce to decrease health inequities in the United States. We propose that curriculum reform includes an ongoing social medicine component for medical students. Continued exposure, practice, and education related to social medicine across medical school will enhance the awareness and knowledge for our students. This will result in better preparation for the zero mile stone residency set forth by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education and will eventually lead to the outcome of higher quality physicians in the United States to treat diverse populations.

Physician assistants training on firearm injury prevention.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to assess physician assistant training programs incorporation of firearm injury prevention training in their curricula. Also, content of such programs as well as perceived benefits and barriers of providing such training were explored. METHODS: A three-wave postal mailing of a 24-item questionnaire was sent to the population (n=145) of physician assistant program directors. RESULTS: The majority (77%) of directors responded. The majority (81.3%) reported they had not seriously thought about providing such training (pre-contemplation). The three most important barriers to providing firearm injury prevention training were: lack of time, lack of faculty expertise on the topic, and lack of standardized teaching materials. Those programs that offered training averaged one-half hour. Yet, 77.7% thought that firearm injuries were a very large or large problem to the health and wellbeing of the U.S. population. CONCLUSION: There is a paucity of professional training for physician assistants regarding firearm injury prevention. It appears unlikely that physician assistants are playing a role in helping to reduce one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., firearm trauma. The American Academy of Physician Assistants needs to take the lead in improving training in this area for physician assistants. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Physician Assistant training program directors should consider offering firearm injury prevention training to help reduce patient suicides and homicides.

Using an H1N1 vaccination drive-through to introduce healthcare students and their faculty to disaster medicine.

Currently, the H1N1 pandemic does not approach the worst-case scenarios that have been predicted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Nevertheless, its impact, fueled by its predilection for nontraditional victims, assorted governmental miscalculations, and journalistic hyperbole, has led to an environment of both fear and skepticism. In this environment, the healthcare infrastructure must sift through relevant data, set aside political rhetoric, weigh the risk-benefit ratio of health-related mandates and recommendations, interact with diverse agencies and departments, and still attend to the medical, psychological, and educational needs of its patients and the community at large. Despite the challenges presented by the H1N1 pandemic, there is also an opportunity for expanded interdisciplinary education. Recent and past events, here and abroad, have demonstrated that in times of great healthcare need, professional students, through either volunteerism or impressments, have been an important asset in disaster medicine and mass gatherings. The current H1N1 situation affords healthcare educators an opportunity to expose the current generation of students to disaster medicine and management of care for aggregates and populations. This educational motive is reinforced by the students' own altruistic desire to not only volunteer in a pandemic but also to act on the belief that it is their obligation. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to describe the preparedness and response roles of healthcare students and their faculty at a major university during the H1N1 crisis as an introduction to the interdisciplinary approach to disaster medicine and mass gatherings.