In this issue:

  Dresden university ranked among the top medical schools in Germany

  Dr. Manuel Guillermo Herrera-Acena receives Klaus PeterAward

  Practi-Med to again put focus on primary care in Japan

  German students view medical training through a new lens during exchange

  HMI to develop training programs for Italian hospital managers

Dresden university ranked among the top medical schools in Germany
Four years ago, when HMI first forged an alliance with Dresden Technical University (TUD), the German medical school’s Carl Gustav Faculty was committed to a comprehensive reform of TUD’s curriculum—just one aspect of their mission to become one of the top medical institutions in Germany. Today their efforts have been rewarded with high marks handed out by the German Academic Exchange Service and publicized by Stern, a widely read German magazine. Of the 36 medical schools in Germany, TUD is ranked among the top six in overall strength, with its highest accolades coming in the categories of student satisfaction, counseling relationships, and equipment.

TUD has been working with HMI to systematically reform its six-year curriculum. To date—encouraged and aided by frequent interactions with HMI and HMS faculty—the Dresden faculty has made case-based learning and tutorials an integral part of their curriculum. Their ultimate goal is to revise each year of their curriculum, and the high rankings show that they are well on their way to accomplishing that.

This comes as no surprise to those at HMI who have been involved in this relationship. “Since the beginning of our collaboration, they have made dramatic changes in the curriculum and teaching methods and have gained increasing national and international visibility,” said Dr. Tom Aretz, director of international education at HMI. “They have been able to attract students, host a very successful medical education conference, and obtain grant funding and other forms of financial support.”

Aretz explains that change like this is difficult in Germany and elsewhere since many different departments need to be integrated to effect these changes. That TUD has been able to make such progress in such a short time is a testament to their vision and leadership.

According to Dr. Peter Dieter, dean of medical education at TUD, this top ranking gives TUD a competitive advantage when trying to attract the best and brightest to Dresden. A crucial element of their success has been their commitment to identifying and satisfying their students’ needs. “We have worked to optimize the relationship between our professors and our students. To accomplish that, we have included students on our program teams, tried to identify and eliminate the negative aspects of programs, and enhanced the best parts,” said Dieter.

The rankings were based on five criteria: students’ opinions, equipment, counseling relationships, research, and professors’ tip, which reflects the reputation of each school’s faculty among other professors in the field. Click here to see how TUD and other medical schools in Germany ranked in these categories.

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Harvard Medical International’s Robert Crone, M.D. giving Klaus Peter Award to Dr. Guillermo Herrera-Acena. (Photo by Liza Green, Copyright 2003, President and Fellows of Harvard College on behalf of HMS Media Services.)

Dr. Manuel Guillermo Herrera-Acena receives
Klaus Peter Award
Manuel Guillermo Herrera-Acena, M.D. was awarded the Klaus Peter International Teaching Award by HMI in recognition of over 25 years of dedication and counsel given to medical students in the elective course Medicine 518, “Nutrition and Rural Medicine in Latin America.” Herrera-Acena, a native of Guatemala, designed the special student exchange course in the 1970s as a way to introduce medical students to the language, culture, and roots of many Latinos/as who live in the U.S. and may become future patients of the students. The course includes intensive Spanish instruction and a two-month clerkship in either a Central or South American location, where students work in different rural clinics and hospitals alongside newly graduated physicians of the host country. The extremely popular course has drawn over 500 students thus far, all of whom are now better equipped to serve Latinos/as in their practices.

Herrera-Acena explains the need for courses such as Medicine 518: “When teaching cultural competence it is not enough to preach respect. It is necessary to learn by experience, by sharing responsibility, by living and working together. Driven by student interest and enthusiasm, Medicine 518 is now a popular elective based on exchange programs with five Latin American medical schools. U.S. and Latin American students learn from each other while caring for the poor, here and abroad.”

In addition to the student exchange program, Herrera-Acena has been active in nutritional research in developing countries. He also continues to run the Spanish Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which he founded over thirty years ago to help address the social, cultural, and linguistic barriers that often prevented Latinos/as in the Boston area from receiving adequate health care.

The $1,000 award, established in honor of Prof. Dr. Klaus Peter, dean of the Medical Faculty at Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich, Germany, is given annually to an HMS faculty member who has contributed significantly to the field of international medical education, international exchanges, and mentoring of international students, residents, and fellows at HMS. Dean Peter was instrumental in the establishment and in the continuing success of the six-year alliance between LMU and HMS.

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Practi-Med to again put focus on primary care
in Japan
For the second straight year, HMI will partner with St. Luke’s Life Science Institute to provide a one-day Practi-Med course in Japan, this time in the city of Kyoto. The September 14th event, entitled “Advances in Medical Diagnosis and Management,” will again feature Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief, and Dr. Thomas Lee, associate editor, both of the New England Journal of Medicine, as well as Dr. Edward O’Rourke, director at HMI. Dr. Gerald Smetana of Harvard Medical School will join this group in presenting symposia on a range of primary care issues, including asthma, depression, antibiotic use, and cardiovascular disease.

Practi-Med is a course that focuses on health care delivery for the front lines of care—primary care physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals. HMI piloted the first such course in Brazil in 2000. Visit the HMI website for a more detailed description of the Brazil course and Practi-Med’s goals, and read about the first Practi-Med course held in Japan last year.

Plans are underway for HMI, in conjunction with the New England Journal of Medicine, to hold Practi-Med courses in Chennai (in southern India) and Shanghai, China in the spring of 2004.

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Tobias Möhlmann

This spring, medical students from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany spent four months in Harvard-affiliated hospitals as third-year medical students at Harvard Medical School, part of an annual exchange program between HMI and LMU. Two of this year’s students, Tobias Möhlmann and Oliver Fuchs, are also recent participants of the United States-European Union Medical Education Exchange (USEUMEE), an exchange program between six schools in the U.S. and Europe, including Harvard Medical School. The USEUMEE exchange asks students to view another country’s health care from a systems perspective. Participants focus on one disease and one patient, and observe how that patient’s experiences with medical care and insurance reflect how the country’s system works.

In the USEUMEE program, Möhlmann spent time at Cornell University Medical College, where he observed the care of patients with multiple sclerosis. Fuchs came to Children’s Hospital in Boston and followed patients with cystic fibrosis. Both were struck by the complexities of the American medical system, where a patient’s insurance is a primary factor in choice of physicians and sometimes the kind of care they receive.

As part of the HMS-LMU exchange, the students participate in an internal medicine clerkship and also take a special course in medical education in which they develop their own proposal for curriculum reform at LMU. This year’s group will be proposing changes for their final year of medical school, called the Practical Year. Möhlmann said that, while the students are happy with their education in Germany, they believe that the clinical teaching could be better organized, with more defined requirements for teaching and evaluation.

“It’s always a great experience to see medicine in another cultural background,” said Möhlmann. After seeing both the health system and the clinical practice in the U.S., the students have also been able to see their medical training and system back home through a new lens. For one, they learn to appreciate the advantages of the German health care system, like universal health insurance. Fuchs noted that, while German students are not usually allowed as much responsibility over patients as students in the U.S., they do become more skilled in basic tasks such as drawing blood, since they perform the bulk of these duties while training in Germany.

HMI to develop training programs for Italian
hospital managers
Harvard Medical International (HMI) and Hospital Management Italia already shared an acronym. Now they share a common goal. Members of HMI’s health systems division will collaborate with HM Italia to develop health care management training and professional development programs to serve the Italian hospital market. Stefano Ali, Chief Executive Officer of HM Italia, said, “By combining Hospital Management Italia’s local knowledge, expertise, and professionalism with the excellent services provided by HMI, we can help increase the value and professionalism in the existing structures of the Italian health care system.” For more information about Hospital Management Italia, please visit their website at http://www.hmitalia.com.

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