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Feature Stories

LMU students leave their mark on German medical education

For six years HMI and Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich have supported a unique program that gives a team of top medical students the opportunity to design a new component of the LMU curriculum while participating in clerkships at Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals. Sixty students have participated in the program since its inception, and the results of their work have helped to reshape undergraduate medical education at LMU. 

The students’ contributions include a book on the fundamentals of history-taking and physical examination that is used throughout Germany, courses on ambulatory care and evidence-based medicine, and a new structure for the sixth year of study. Students have also developed a concept for the integration of basic sciences and clinical medicine in the first two years of the curriculum.

“Most of these projects have been realized and have been integrated into the LMU curriculum,” said Tom Aretz, MD, HMI Vice President of Global Programs. He added that several former students have become LMU faculty members and are actively involved in ongoing changes to undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum.

The 2007 group devised an online portfolio system designed to encourage reflection and critical analysis to help students chart their professional and career development. The students envisioned the portfolio system as a companion to the existing mentorship program pairing LMU students with faculty. The online portfolios will contain documents related to personal and professional development, such as personal statements and essays, samples of patient evaluations, and written feedback from mentors and patients.

In July, the students presented the project to LMU faculty by videoconference and received enthusiastic and overwhelmingly positive feedback.

The curriculum design program, first offered in 2002, was originally conceived by students and LMU. It has received strong support from LMU faculty and made the HMI-LMU student program one of the most highly valued exchange opportunities among LMU medical students.

“The program is now evidencing some cultural continuity, within the subgroup of ten students, across classes, and throughout the medical school itself,” said Antoinette Peters, PhD, Director of Curriculum Development in the HMS Office for Educational Development and the advisor for the program. “Not only do the students present their curriculum designs to the LMU faculty and administrators at the end of the program, but they hand off the project to a faculty champion upon returning home. They are invited to continue working on the project as they finish their studies, and thereafter should they take a job at LMU.”

Peters said that the program has inspired the tradition of students who have participated counseling the incoming class about American-style clinical education and patient care. Students share their strategies for tackling the curriculum development project, conduct a survey in order to better understand the needs and attitudes of the medical student body, and create smaller task forces with some students serving as liaisons.