EDUCATION RESEARCH POSTER PRESENTATION ABSTRACTS
Please note: All posters will be displayed in Salons 10-12.

THURSDAY, 10:15-11:00 AM


Frenkel M, Sierpina V.

Evaluating the effect of complementary medicine curricular change in a medical school environment.

University of Texas Medical Branch mafrenke@utmb.edu

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) received a grant from the NIH to to create educational enhancements in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in our medical, nursing and allied health schools from 2001-2005. The process of developing curricular change involved multiple approaches including lectures, workshops, a journal club, a website, web-cases, and easily acceccible and reliable web-based resources. Other learning activities included a four week elective rotation, an amubulatory community selective, and the weaving of CAM issues into multiple existing courses in the medical , nursing and allied health schools. . In this presentation we describe the results of qualitative research done at the completion of this educational initiative. During this assessment , we evaluated the educational and cultural changes resulting from this curricular initiative on the UTMB academic environment. Interviews were analyzed by independent qualitative assessment. The interviewees were leaders in medical education in UTMB such as dean of medical education, course directors, other leading faculty, as well as a graduated UTMB students in residency who had been students during the implementation of the CAM initiative. Emerging from these in-depth interviews were the impacts of this project summarized as "lessons learned" and other important themes which we will discuss.

 

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