In this issue:

 New partnership in Geneva to bring education programs to Europe

  Unique program lets Chinese hospital learn from U.S. experience

  Med students from Munich propose course in primary care

  HMI’s newest member brings expertise in nursing, clinical services

 BioSecurity 2002 to spotlight vaccines, responses to bioterrorism

 Online surgical training program nets new awards

New partnership in Geneva to bring educational programs to Europe
HMI signed an agreement with the University of Geneva in Switzerland to establish a Center of Excellence to offer joint medical educational programs. The Center will provide an opportunity for faculty from HMI and the University of Geneva to share ideas and collaborate in the design and implementation of educational courses for academics and health care professionals in the French-speaking world.

The Center will deliver a broad spectrum of programs. Many international delegates who have participated in courses at Harvard Medical School have express a desire to see similar courses tailored for a European audience, such as the Harvard Macy Institute’s program for leaders in education. HMI’s partnership with the University of Geneva Center of Excellence will provide an infrastructure for developing these leadership programs as well as offering new kinds of courses and educational opportunities.

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Unique program lets Chinese hospital learn from U.S. experience

Dr. Harvey Makadon, left, and Dr. Robert Crone of HMI stand with Dr. Jian-guang Xu.

In June, Dr. Jian-guang Xu, deputy director of Hua Shan Hospital in Shanghai, China, spent two weeks in Boston for a special course on hospital management and education designed by HMI.

Xu had the opportunity to attend the Harvard Macy Institute course for Physician Leaders in June. In his previous role as director of medical education in the Department of Hand Surgery at Hua Shan, Xu took a comparative approach to reform by visiting hospitals in several countries to learn how to train young doctors in his field. These experiences “greatly enhanced my experience in the area of education and training for young doctors’ continuing medical education,” and helped bring a pool of talent to the department, he said. Although Xu now manages the clinical operations of the hospital, he remains concerned about how residents are trained at the teaching hospital.

The following week, Xu met with senior administrators from several Harvard affiliated teaching hospitals to discuss some of the important challenges Hua Shan is facing. China is experiencing rapid changes in its economy following its entry into the WTO, and the hospital must compete more and more with other hospitals in the health care market, Xu said. “We want to learn more from western countries, especially the U.S.,” he added, because the U.S. has already experienced some of these changes.

Xu said he was especially interested in learning approaches to improve clinical quality in a cost-efficient way. He is also looking for ways to manage hospital staff and motivate physicians, who do not always receive the same recognition in China as they do in the U.S. Dr. Miles Shore, Bullard professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Harris Berman, CEO of Tufts Health Plan, assisted with the program’s design.

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Med students from Munich propose course in ambulatory care
A group of students from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany have the opportunity to make some changes in the curriculum of their school. Each year, students from LMU come to Boston to complete clinical rotations at Harvard-affiliated hospitals. They also take a special course in medical education and work on a project in curriculum design. This year’s group—the first students to have experienced all of LMU’s redesigned, problem-based courses—were given the task of designing a course in ambulatory care that might be adopted into the LMU curriculum. Rather than just looking at the course from a student perspective, the group considered the needs of physicians, faculty, the school, and the region in the course design.

Michael Mühlstädt, center, presents ideas for teaching ambulatory care with fellow students from Munich Oliver Bleiziffer, left, and Felix Joachimski.

In a presentation to HMI staff and faculty on Aug 1, the students explained that ambulatory care has been lacking in the German medical curriculum, despite the fact that health care practice is shifting from the hospital to the office. “There is not sufficient insight into the field of primary care in Munich so far,” said student Michael Mühlstädt. But there are barriers to implementing a new course, such as finding and training primary care doctors who are removed from the academic medical setting, and ensuring that the right topics are covered.

The students decided the course should have one afternoon a week in a primary care practice. On other days students would present and discuss patient cases in tutorials based on those of Dr. Allan Goroll, Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. There would also be an “extra” session each day that would allow faculty to focus on specific topics. The students had also given consideration to some of the cultural challenges of bringing primary care faculty into the university and providing incentives for teaching. The proposal was also presented via teleconference to LMU faculty, who were impressed by the students’ ideas and efforts.

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HMI’s newest member brings expertise in nursing, clinical services

Betsy Brown

Betsy Brown, RN, MSN, MBA joined HMI this summer as its director of clinical services. As a member of the health systems team, she will serve as a consultant in clinical program planning and development, patient care services, and nursing and allied health professional education. Brown most recently served as the director of medical services at Por Cristo, the international health arm of the Caritas Christi Health Care System. Explaining her decision to come to HMI, Brown said: “Institutions throughout the world are facing similar issues in providing safe, high quality patient care in an environment of competing resources. Teams of health professionals are developing their own creative solutions, and are eager to learn from each other. Coming from a nursing background, I recognize the impact that connecting these people and experiences can have in improving patient care. ”

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BioSecurity 2002 to spotlight vaccines, responses to bioterrorism
HMI is developing the educational program for BioSecurity 2002, an international forum for all groups and individuals dealing with the threat of bioterrorism to share experiences and knowledge. BioSecurity 2002 will take place November. 18-21 at the MGM Grand Hotel and Conference Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Highlights of the main program include:

The Silver Bullet: Can Technology Protect Liberty and Security?
Moderated by Juliette Kayyem, executive director of the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, this session discusses the search for technological solutions to new security challenges and questions whether they pose a threat to privacy and liberty.

PulseNet: A Model for Food Borne Disease Surveillance
Dr. Balasubr Swaminathan, chief of the Foodborne & Diarrheal Disease Lab Section at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discusses PulseNet, which has revolutionized food borne disease surveillance in the United States and is rapidly gaining acceptance internationally.

Weighing The Communication Risks: Balancing Science With The Media Surge
From academic and practice perspectives, two public health professionals—Nancy Kay Wessman, director of Public Relations for the State of Mississippi, and Dr. Donald J. Krogstad, Henderson Professor and chair of Tropical Medicine at Tulane—will discuss how to communicate risk through the mass media to prevent and control domestic bioterrorism and assure proper public response.

A parallel program called Vaccines: The Paradigm Quake--Truths and Controversies, co-sponsored by the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences, will be held November 18-19. It will discuss the basic science of vaccines, emerging threats, controversies, and public policy implications of vaccine development.

For more information and to register for BioSecurity 2002, visit http://www.biosecuritysummit.com/.

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Online surgical training program nets new awards
BeST - Basic electronic Surgical Training - has just won two new awards, in addition to last year's USDLA Award for Excellence in Distance Learning for Healthcare and Telemedicine and the International EMMA Award for excellence in digital media content creation. BeST, the online surgical training program developed by Harvard Medical International (HMI), the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), and Intuition, won the overall "Project of the Year" award at the Inaugural Pharmaceutical Industry Awards, the judges unanimously declaring it the winner from among the 39 projects submitted. BeST also won best project in the category "Best Professional Educational Project - Secondary Care." The awards were presented in Dublin in June 2002.

BeST is the world's first comprehensive online program in basic surgical training. BeST Resident, the version of BeST developed for U.S.-based practice, allows interns to review surgical procedures, surgical residents to study for the US ABSITE exam, and serves as a review and reference tool for medical students. Users can access BeST at home, in the hospital, or in a library, and program directors can monitor residents' or students' progress on the system. Click here for an article on BeST Resident from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

A free trial of BeST Resident is available online. For further information, contact Paulette Smiles , +1 (617) 535-6400.

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