gms | German Medical Science

There is widespread concern among accrediting agencies, the public, and the medical establishment that medical schools are failing to develop competencies in their students that are essential for the delivery of quality medical care. In response to these concerns, Mayo Medical School has embarked upon a critical evaluation of its curriculum. Beginning with our mission - to use a patient-centered focus and strengths of the Mayo Clinic to educate physicians to serve society by assuming leadership roles

in medical practice, education and research - we have charged our faculty with the responsibility of developing a series of outcomes to ensure that our students meet basic competencies, including medical knowledge, patient care, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, practice based learning and improvement, and systems based practice. We have recently completed the process of mapping our curricular outcomes to the basic competencies. Our curriculum committee will use these outcomes to provide the basis for decisions regarding changes to the curriculum, including allocation of time and resources. We are actively engaged in the process of developing tools to reliably assess our curricular outcomes. It is clear that the traditional multiple choice examinations will need to be supplemented by other assessment modalities, including direct observation, peer evaluation, and portfolio tracking.