Bridging the Gap: Transition from UME to GME. 4 Credit Hours

Catalog description

Medical education is changing with the introduction of a United States Licensure Medical Examination (USMLE) Step 1 scored on a pass/fail basis, increasing focus on the Undergraduate Medical Education to Graduate Medical Education transition, and changes to the residency application process. No longer can medical students wait until their senior academic year to prepare for USMLE Step 2 and discern their chosen specialty. In this course, which is to be delivered during the spring immediately prior to their senior year, medical students will be given instruction on specialty discernment and trained in test preparation techniques. Specialty discernment requires various forms of advising and mentoring. In this course, students will receive general instruction on the process of specialty discernment and will use online resources to prepare for residency applications in the context of academic metrics, specific program requirements, and specialty-based resources. The transition from undergraduate to graduate medical education is one of intense focus. While the transition seems as if it has a marked delineation, it exists on a continuum. In order to support the active process of creating goals, students need to reflect on their experiences as a clerkship student and create expectations of themselves in the context of their chosen specialty and career. Goal orientation in the context of mastery orientation defines success in terms of how well the knowledge, skills, and abilities have been demonstrated. (Cutrer, et al.) This type of goal orientation requires reframing and additional advising depending on the phase of the learner. Test preparation does not have to be separate and dedicated from the medical curriculum. In fact, directing learners to recognize opportunities to use exam preparation to build and apply more clinically-minded strategies, even when the content of the exam may not focus on clinical reasoning or diagnosis, might better prepare them to learn from their patients and to apply similar strategies later on. (Swan Sein, et al., 2021). By creating learning structures that facilitate this environment, medical students can use test preparation and test taking skills beyond the testing center. Prerequisites: at least 1 clerkship.