Congratulations to Drs. Rick Hobbs and Julie Byerley for being awarded a NC AHEC Innovation Grant entitled “Development of South East Area Health Education Center (SEAHEC) as a Pediatric Medical Student Clerkship Site through Faculty Development and Use of Mobile Health Technology”
With the creation of the new University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine Translational Education at Carolina (TEC) curriculum, students will begin clerkship rotations in March of 2016. The TEC curriculum emphasizes integration interdisciplinary education.
The grant will support the utilization of mobile health technology to supplement the on-site education at the SEAHEC, ensuring comparability of education across AHEC sites. Each student starting their clerkship will be handed a tablet containing the necessary materials to thrive on their pediatric clerkship. These devices contain textbooks, study guides, video-captured lectures, case-based problem solving simulations, landmark papers, etc. Students will also use it at a patient’s bedside, providing access to the electronic medical record, point-of-care applications, medical calculators, drug references, the paging system, communication aids, and more.
Why is it needed?
UNC Pediatrics currently instructs students in their clinical rotations at five hospitals and 32 outpatient clinics— a number that will increase significantly with the TEC curriculum. Vital in the effort to augment student teaching capacity is the establishment of the SEAHEC as a regional center for undergraduate medical education, similar to current offerings in Charlotte and Asheville. However, with so many teaching sites utilized, variability in delivery of educational content puts UNC in danger of having separate medical school experiences based on where a student completes his or her clinical years.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) is clear that we must maintain comparability of educational experience, even as we expand and create new and exciting educational offerings. Our goal is to bridge these gaps and deliver similar, high-quality, integrated pediatric content across the state—even as our classroom expands to additional AHEC sites.
This $23,099 award from the NC AHEC Innovation Grant follows a UNC junior faculty development award Hobbs received in 2014 to perform preliminary work on this project.