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Individualized Learning in Anatomy to Diversify Tomorrow's Medical Field
Author(s) -
Gong Jing Jing,
Schindel Benjamin,
Jerome Christopher,
Antoine Kevin L.,
Pagano Anthony S.,
Márquez Samuel
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.30.1_supplement.788.4
Subject(s) - outreach , enthusiasm , curriculum , medical education , test (biology) , inclusion (mineral) , population , session (web analytics) , diversity (politics) , medical school , medicine , psychology , pedagogy , political science , social psychology , paleontology , environmental health , world wide web , computer science , law , biology
In public school classrooms, the large‐class format encourages the majority to dictate learning pace, often to the detriment of individual progress. This problem is especially pressing among “minority” groups that have been “historically underrepresented in medicine relative to their numbers in the general population” (as defined by the American Association of Medical Colleges – AAMC). Downstate Health Professions Recruitment and Exposure Program (HPREP) annually invites 36 Brooklyn high school students from minority groups to attend physiology lectures, conduct anatomical dissections, and learn clinical skills from medical students. To quantify student learning, five‐question pre‐ and post‐test evaluations are conducted at each session. Results showed a statistically significant difference in pre‐ and post‐test assessment ( P < 0.02) for the first session of our program, which is comparable to the P‐ values of all session activities from last year. The key to the outreach program stems from HPREP's individualized curriculum approach and using anatomy to fuel the high school students’ passion for medicine. The low student‐to‐mentor ratio of 2:1 encourages students to ask questions, explore the scientific method in a hands‐on approach, and gain confidence in their academic abilities. The Assistant Vice President of the Office of Diversity & Inclusion at SUNY Downstate supports this student‐driven education outreach program because it will have an immediate impact on our community by initiating excitement, cultivating enthusiasm, and promoting the exposure of our young underrepresented students to medical career options. While the long‐term effects cannot be immediately measured, fostering this early interest in medicine and familiarity with the essential discipline of anatomy is a critical first step to ensuring greater diversity among healthcare professionals.