Abstract
This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. Introduction: An increasing number of North American medical schools are assigning unique names ("monikers") to their undergraduate curricula, but it is unclear as to how often this occurs, and what kind of names schools are choosing. Method: A manual review of the 160 websites that corresponded to Schools of Medicine that were either fully or provisionally accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). Results: 31.5% of the 143 U.S. allopathic medical schools and only one (5.8%) of the 17 LCME accredited Canadian medical schools currently associate a unique curricular name with their undergraduate medical education programs. Use of a constant-comparative technique suggested that schools that did assign a curricular name to their programs had selected names that aligned to one of eight over-arching themes. Conclusions: While curricular names were somewhat less commonly applied in schools located in the western United States, no specific trends in thematic choices predominated in any geographic region. However, the impact of curricular themes on current and/or prospective medical students remains an area for continued exploration, as does the longitudinal question as to whether thematically named curricula succeed in delivering their intended results.
Highlights
An increasing number of North American medical schools are assigning unique names ("monikers") to their undergraduate curricula, but it is unclear as to how often this occurs, and what kind of names schools are choosing
The 2nd Carnegie Foundation Report (Cooke, Irby and O’Brien, 2010) emphasized the importance of professional identity formation. While this certainly applies to individual students, does it apply to the names associated with medical school curricula? Stated another way, what message does a curricular name convey to prospective applicants? Do contemporary curricular names evoke a set of common themes? Our collective impressions suggested that an increasing number of North American medical schools have begun assigning a specific curricular name to their educational programs
The survey was sent to the Associate Deans for Education and/or to the Associate Deans for Curriculum at all North American medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and included a question asking, "does your current or revised curriculum have a name?" to further reduce the likelihood that any curricular names were inadvertently overlooked, three co-authors (SD, WG, and LP) each rereviewed a randomized selection of 5% of websites for which a curricular name was not identified in the primary review
Summary
An increasing number of North American medical schools are assigning unique names ("monikers") to their undergraduate curricula, but it is unclear as to how often this occurs, and what kind of names schools are choosing. Results: 31.5% of the 143 U.S allopathic medical schools and only one (5.8%) of the 17 LCME accredited Canadian medical schools currently associate a unique curricular name with their undergraduate medical education programs. The 2nd Carnegie Foundation Report (Cooke, Irby and O’Brien, 2010) emphasized the importance of professional identity formation While this certainly applies to individual students, does it apply to the names associated with medical school curricula? Our collective impressions suggested that an increasing number of North American medical schools have begun assigning a specific curricular name to their educational programs. We wondered if there might be a geographic distribution to the naming of curricula or if this might be a phenomenon of public vs private or newer vs more established medical schools
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