SOM Revised Educational Program Objectives

By: Lecretia A. Buckley, PhD

Guided by its mission to train skilled and compassionate physicians to provide high-quality and equitable health care particularly to the state’s residents, including diverse and underserved populations, the UM School of Medicine (SOM) prepares learners to provide excellent care through programs of innovative education, state-of-the-art research and comprehensive clinical practice. This mission undergirds the medical education curriculum, practices, and policies, and the curriculum supports our mission and distills to the program’s six educational program objectives (EPOs). These objectives “reflect the essential requirements for physicians to act in an ethical and altruistic fashion while providing competent medical care and fulfilling their obligations to their patients.” The EPOs, found in the UMMC bulletin, were reviewed, and updates were approved in May 2022 by the Curriculum Committee.

The Curriculum Committee, empowered by the dean, oversees the design, management, and evaluation of the educational program of the SOM. Eight subcommittees engage in the work of the Curriculum Committee. They include: (1) Clinical Sciences (2) Curriculum Development and Innovation, (3) Evaluation and Assessment (4) Foundational Sciences, (5) Program Evaluation, (6) Professional Identity Formation (7) Society and Medicine, and (8) Systems-Based Practice.

The six EPOs address multiple areas in which medical students are trained. They address (a) medical knowledge, (2) patient care, (3) systems-based practice, (4) practice-based learning and improvement, (5) interpersonal communication skills, and (6) professionalism. A brief description of each of these areas is provided.

The school’s EPOs should guide what is taught. As such, teaching faculty, supervisors, and those who assess medical students should know these EPOs and how they inform their day-to-day educational activities.

• Medical knowledge: Graduates must recognize alterations from the normal structure and function of the human body, identify causes of such abnormalities, and describe their pathogenesis.
• Patient care: Graduates must utilize the appropriate diagnostic and interventional skills necessary to evaluate, accurately diagnose, and appropriately treat each patient.
• Systems-based practice: Graduates must navigate the American healthcare system in a manner that promotes equitable and high-quality care, ensures patients receive needed care regardless of insurance coverage and guarantees transparency in financial arrangements.
• Practice-based learning and improvement: Graduates must evaluate and accept limitations in their knowledge and clinical skills and commit to continuously improving their knowledge and abilities.
• Interpersonal communication skills: Graduates must communicate with patients, families, and team members in a manner that optimizes safe, effective patient- and population-centered care.
• Professionalism: Graduates must provide ethical and beneficent medical care for all patients.

Together, the SOM EPOs provide a framework for what should be taught in the medical education program. Annually, course objectives are mapped onto at least one of the six EPOs in the OME’s curriculum mapping process. The SOM curriculum map is submitted to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in September. It is available for course and clerkship directors as they develop courses that align with the school’s EPOs and daily sessions that ensure vertical and horizontal alignment of content. Medical knowledge is developing at a rapid pace and selecting what to teach ultimately lies with the Curriculum Committee and the content’s connection with the school’s EPOs. While the SOM cannot teach its students everything, the Curriculum Committee offers faculty, an avenue to examine content and its appropriateness and to obtain approval for inclusion in the curriculum.