In this issue:

  A special message to HMI partners and participating faculty

  Program helps Taiwanese professionals build health care management capabilities

   LMU students design curriculum for proposed medical education center

  Problem-based learning is focus of program for educators in Portugal

  HMSDC endocrinology course to be held in Dubai in November

  UAE student completes HMSDC medical librarian fellowship

  Pallavi Jagasia recognized with HMI’s Employee Recognition Award

  HMI website offers prospective partners a convenient way to connect

A special message to HMI partners and participating faculty
At HMI we are currently preparing the 2006 HMI Annual Report, which brings together stories of our programs and partnerships to present a portrait of HMI’s mission at work. The Annual Report covers our activities in the 2006 fiscal year, beginning in July 2005, with a focus not only on the collaborative work performed in the past year, but also of our partners’ progress towards achieving their objectives. During FY06, HMI delivered more than 50 programs in 30 countries. To help ensure that we capture the impact of these collaborations, we are inviting our partners, faculty, and colleagues around the world to send us their thoughts on the past year. What has been the impact, on your institution, of your partnership with HMI? What has the partnership meant for you as an individual? If you are a faculty member who has helped to lead an HMI program, how has this participation enriched you professionally?

Please send your comments to hmiworld@hms.harvard.edu. View past HMI Annual Reports by visiting our website.

Members of the group from National Sun Yat-Sen University

Program helps Taiwanese professionals build health care management capabilities
Twenty-three Taiwanese health care professionals came to Boston in July for a weeklong health care management course developed by HMI in association with the Institute of Health Care Management (IHCM) at National Sun Yat-Sen University.

Dr. Ying-Chun Li, an assistant professor at IHCM, spearheaded the course, and worked with HMI senior consultant Miles Shore, MD to create a curriculum focusing on several key themes, including health care economics, clinical quality management and patient safety, health care innovation, information technology, leadership, and negotiation and conflict resolution. The program participants had varying amounts of professional experience as physicians, nurses, or hospital managers, and were eager to deepen their understanding of complex health care management issues. The course featured interactive exercises involving a multidisciplinary group of faculty from throughout Harvard University, the medical school, and its affiliates.

In the past two decades, Taiwan’s health care system has been undergoing significant reform, with a major focus on implementing systems and technology to increase access to health care resources and ensure even distribution throughout Taiwan.

Said Shore, “The students from IHCM were energetic, motivated, and excited by the ideas presented to them. We trust that this course enhanced their leadership and management skills while enriching their education in major health care issues.”

HMI’s Sharon Kleefield led a discussion on health care quality management.

LMU students design curriculum for proposed medical education center
Now in the tenth year of its alliance with HMI, Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) of Munich continues to support a unique program that allows a select group of top students to work collaboratively to create a piece of new curriculum for the school, while completing an intensive four-month clerkship experience at Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospitals in Boston.

The student curriculum design project, begun in 2002, was originally initiated by members of the student body, and LMU faculty have enthusiastically supported their efforts each year. This year’s contingent of sixth-year medical students was given the task of creating a skills lab for clinical simulation of reality. The program offered the students the opportunity to develop and test their own ideas, and the freedom to define the process.

In July, the students presented to the LMU faculty via videoconference a highly detailed and ambitious vision of a medical education center at LMU. The multi-step plan, emphasizing “continuous education” and offering proposals for both short-term change and more elaborate long-term goals, was designed to create the ideal student: knowledgable, experienced, and confident in mastering communication, practical, and virtual skills. In addition to their own experience, the students drew on the experiences of other LMU students by designing and distributing an online survey to help characterize the needs of students in a skills lab setting, and researching other schools and programs with similar offerings. The students identified three essential domains of communication skills as communication with patient, about the patient, and with colleagues in medicine and science. Addressing virtual skills, the students designed and demonstrated an interactive tutorial computer program with three levels of difficulty, including videos and the ability to chat with a tutor.

“This was a truly remarkable group, both engaged and engaging,” said Toni Peters, PhD, director of curriculum development in the HMS Office for Educational Development and supervisor of the student curriculum design program. “The students embraced their differences through collegiality and respect for one another, using them as opportunities rather than barriers.” Peters commended the professionalism displayed by the students throughout the experience, as well as the thorough evidence-based research that supported the project.

Problem-based learning is focus of program for educators in Portugal
In July, the Universidade de Catolica Portuguesa (UCP) brought together medical faculty from throughout Portugal for a three-day HMI education program on integrating problem-based learning (PBL) into medical curricula. This was the second year in a row that UCP, a Lisbon-based institution with regional campuses around the country, has offered this course in collaboration with HMI. The course is the capstone of UCP’s master’s program in medical education.

The course was directed by Elizabeth Armstrong, PhD, HMI director for education programs; David Golan, MD, PhD, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School; and UCP neurology professor Alexandre Castro-Caldas, MD, PhD.

A fundamental objective of the course was to first help the participants understand the principles of PBL and the rationale for integrating it into medical curricula. The course progressed to cover various approaches to constructing innovative hybrid curricula that utilize case discussions and small-group tutorials. A highlight of the course was a demonstration of student tutorials led by Dr. Golan, who worked with a group of local students to show the assembled faculty how to structure and facilitate tutorials.

“Student tutorials are a staple of high-quality medical curricula, in part because they shift the center of gravity in the learning environment by engaging the students in active discussion and inquiry,” said Golan. “The acquisition of content is just one benefit of this kind of interactive education strategy. Tutorials also help students develop effective learning strategies, problem-solving capabilities, and communication skills, and become reflective and self-directed learners.”

HMSDC endocrinology course to be held in Dubai in November

Dr. Anthony Hollenberg

The Harvard Medical School Dubai Center (HMSDC) Institute for Postgraduate Education & Research will host “Specialty Practi-Med: Endocrinology for Primary Care Physicians and Obstetricians” in Dubai. The two-day continuing medical education course will address the latest developments and current best practices in endocrinology, featuring keynote lectures by clinical leaders from Harvard Medical School and the Gulf Region, as well as interactive small-group workshops.

The course will be led by Anthony Hollenberg, MD. Dr. Hollenberg is Chief of the Thyroid Unit at Beth Israel Deaoness Medical Center in Boston and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He will be joined on the course faculty by colleagues at Harvard Medical School as well as leading faculty from the Gulf Region.

The program is designed to provide participants with the latest strategies regarding the prevention, recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of important endocrine syndromes, and introduce them to new and emerging concepts impacting the practice of endocrinology. Program topics include management of thyroid disease, diagnosis and treatment of type II diabetes, the role of nutrition in the prevention and management of diabetes, and current medical and surgical approaches to the therapy of obesity.

“Specialty Practi-Med: Endocrinology for Primary Care Physicians and Obstetricians” will be held November 9-10 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Dubai. To view the course program, please click here. To register, please print, complete, and fax the Course Registration Form. HMSDC also offers opportunities for sponsorship and exhibition opportunities to select organizations. To learn more, please contact HMSDC at info-hmsdc@hms.harvard.edu.

UAE student completes HMSDC medical librarian fellowship
Layla Salem Albraiki has completed a medical librarian fellowship under the auspices of the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center (HMSDC) Institute for Postgraduate Education and Research and the Maktoum Harvard Medical Library.

The fellowship brought Layla, a UAE national, to Boston, where she was exposed to a number of local libraries, including Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library and the patient and family education libraries at HMS affiliates. Her goal was to learn more about the processes and resources that support successful libraries. She was impressed by the quality of the hospital libraries, noting that she saw firsthand how patients and their families were “health consumers eager to learn more about the medical conditions affecting their lives.”

She added, “In the UAE, patients also want to know more about their conditions, but they seem to depend only on the doctors and the nurses, and few realize that a medical librarian can also play a great role in health education.”

Layla said that the development of the Maktoum Harvard Medical Library in HMSDC will fill a critical need in the UAE and help patients to better educate themselves. “Internet and web resources are one option, but there is no guarantee that the information available on these sites is valid and reliable. A librarian may be the best person in this situation to contact.”

Construction on the Maktoum Harvard Medical Library began earlier this year, and it is expected to be completed in 2008. In the meantime HMSDC is working to educate medical librarians who will be needed to staff the new library. 

“It is a great step taken by the Dubai Government and Harvard Medical School Dubai Center to open this library in Dubai and give this wonderful opportunity to UAE nationals to be an active participant to run such a fabulous place,” she said. “I hope to be a part of Harvard Medical School Dubai Center in the future and serve my country.”

Layla earned a bachelor’s degree in health information management from Sharjah Women’s College, part of the Higher Colleges of Technology. To learn more about fellowships offered by HMSDC, including studies in medical library science, please visit the Fellowships section of the HMSDC website. 

Pallavi Jagasia recognized with HMI's Employee Recognition Award

HMI’s Pallavi “PJ” Jagasia, manager of business development, is the latest recipient of HMI’s Employee Recognition Award, given to recognize outstanding service to the organization and its partners. PJ has had a tremendous impact on the way HMI establishes and maintains relationships with partners since joining HMI in 2005. Her stewardship of the business development process has increased operational efficiency and improved HMI’s ability to respond to the needs of present and prospective partners.

Past awardees include Ryan Wildes, Rachel D’Ambrosio, Holly Vogel, Margaret Regan, Diane Standring, Karin Vander Schaff, Diane Standring, Irene Daly, Kristen Mitchell, and Nancy Soule.

HMI website offers prospective partners a convenient way to connect
Organizations interested in establishing a partnership with HMI can now begin that process with a visit to HMI’s main website. By filling out a simple web form, prospective partners can inform HMI of their goals and interests, and help HMI accelerate the process of determining a course for meeting their needs. The form, located in the “Contact Us” section of our main website, is easy to use, can be completed quickly, and serves as a direct line to HMI’s program development teams. 

HMI creates customized partnerships with academic institutions, health care organizations, corporations, governments, and non-governmental organizations. Prospective partners must demonstrate a commitment to good business practices and have sufficient resources to carry on a collaborative relationship.

HMI World welcomes comments from readers. Please send us your thoughts on any of the articles in the Bulletin section.

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