Project to Improve Professionalism Training and Evaluation and to Expand Rural Training at the University of KY

Abstract Both the American Board ofInternal Medicine's Professionalism Project and the Collaborative Curriculum Project of the Family Medicine Curriculum Resource, which was funded by HRSA, suggest that professionalism is a central tenet of care and recommend increased emphasis on professionalism in medical training. In accord with this, innovations in professionalism receive special consideration in the Program i\nnouncement for this application. This project will develop an innovative professionalism curriculum component for insertion into pre-clinical education at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine (UKCOM). The professionalism curriculum will be woven into the core non-biomedical pre-clinical courses in the first two years tor all students. This component will include experiences and exercises designed to instill selfreflection as a necessary skill for professionalism and life long learning. Building on the success of the UKCOM rural training track (RTT), which was developed with a 2002 HRSA grant, we will also cultivate a third site for the third-year rural primary care clerkship. This will increase the number of students who are able to emphasize rural health care and disparities in their training. They will also be able to explore professionalism contextually in a rural environment. The RTT allows students who have pre-existing interest in rural health care to perpetuate and build on this interest via the longitudinal focus and enhanced activities of the RTT. As a rural state with a persistent and progressively worsening shortage of physicians, it is imperative to provide these students with opportunities to explore their interests in rural medicine. Our project will also develop and test new evaluation methods to hold students accountable to core professionalism competencies in the curriculum. Development of innovative evaluation processes for the core professionalism competencies has national importance.