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IAMSE Board of Director Slate Now Online

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I am pleased to present the Nominating Committee’s slate of candidates for the 2020 election of members for the Board of Directors of the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE). In accordance with our bylaws, the committee has delivered these names and supporting materials for posting to our website. I now invite you to review the individuals and their qualifications.
Click Here to view the slate

This information will remain posted throughout the month of February, and on March 1st an electronic ballot will be activated. At that time, IAMSE members in good standing will be invited to select three (3) of the candidates for the position of Director.

Write-in candidates will be accepted until Friday, February 14th. To qualify for nomination by petition, each candidate must have the support of at least 15 IAMSE members in good standing. All petitions and letters must be addressed to and received by IAMSE (support@iamse.org) on or before midnight Eastern Time (GMT-5).

Thank you,
Julie K. Hewett, CMP, CAE
IAMSE Association Manager

Registration Now Open for the Spring 2020 Webcast Audio Seminar Series

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Registration is now open for the IAMSE Spring 2020 Webcast Audio Seminar series. Sessions begin on March 5, 2020.
Evolution and Revolution in Medical Education:

Health Systems Sciences
Health Systems Sciences have evolved as the third pillar of medical education, integrated with the two historic pillars—basic and clinical sciences. To address this curricular innovation, the Spring 2020 IAMSE webcast audio seminar series will explore the implementation of Health Systems Science (HSS) curricula in medical education. Experts and thought leaders will discuss curricular efforts to incorporate HSS in both the pre-clerkship and clerkship years as well as residency. Specifically, after an introduction, the audience will learn about the goals and objectives of HSS curricula and become familiar with the challenges, obstacles and feasibility as well as current curricular programs and efforts. Curricular strategies in UME, both pre-clerkship and clerkship will be presented with hands-on detail including challenges of integration with basic and clinical sciences and assessment. At the end of the seminar series, the audience will be able to design and implement an HSS curriculum at their own institutions.

Join us for each one-hour session beginning March 5, 2020 at 12PM EST.

Register Your Institution for the Series!

Register Yourself for the Series!

March 5, 2020 at 12PM Eastern – The Third Pillar of Medical Education: Health Systems Science with Jed Gonzalo and Ami DeWaters
March 12, 2020 at 12PM Eastern – Health Systems Science: The Pre-Clinical Years in Medical School with Anna Chang, Edgar Pierluissi and Adrienne Green
March 19, 2020 at 12PM Eastern – Health Systems Science: The Clinical Years (and transition) in Medical School with Maya Hammoud and Mamta Singh
March 26, 2020 at 12PM Eastern –Preparing Faculty to Teach HSS in the Clinical Learning Environment with Luan Lawson and Kelly Caverzagie
April 2, 2020 at 12PM Eastern – The Broccoli of US Medical Education: Key Health Systems Science Challenges with Jed Gonzalo and Stephanie Starr

For additional information or questions, please contact us via email at support@iamse.org

And the best part is

IAMSE Student Members Register FREE!

For more information on the series, student discount code or to register for individual sessions, contact support@iamse.org.

IAMSE Winter 2020 Webinar Series Session 5 with Lee Jones

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Lee Jones to Present “Medical Students and Substance Use: Challenges and Supports”

The 2020 IAMSE Winter Webcast Audio Seminar Series has been a fantastic series and will wrap up next week! This series has provided a comprehensive synopsis of the efforts to respond to the opioid crisis from the perspective of health science education and innovative curricula. Our final session in the series will feature Lee Jones, MD from the University of California San Francisco.

Medical Students and Substance Use: Challenges and Supports 
Presenter: Lee Jones, MD
Session: February 6, 2020 at 12pm Eastern Time

Multiple sources have documented the level of medical student substance use, including marijuana and opioids. Challenges for medical schools in states where marijuana has been legalized will be discussed and approaches to dealing with potentially lethal medical student opioid use.

For more information and to register for the Winter 2020 Audio Seminar Series, please visit registration for individuals and institutions.

#IAMSE 2020 Plenary Highlight – Maria Mylopoulos

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The 2020 IAMSE meeting offers many opportunities for faculty development and networking, and brings medical sciences and medical education across the continuum together. This year’s main topic is Envisioning the Future of Health Sciences Education. One of our four confirmed keynote speakers is Maria Mylopoulos from the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Mylopoulos will be speaking on cognition, curriculum and adaptive expertise.


Preparing future experts: Cognition, Curriculum and Adaptive Expertise
Presenter: Maria Mylopoulos – University of Toronto
Plenary Address: Sunday, June 14, 2020, 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM

As we look to the future, there is a growing gap between what we will need medical experts to do and the training we provide them. While medical education has a long history of being guided by theories of expertise to inform curriculum design and implementation, the theories that currently underpin our educational programs do not account for the expertise necessary for excellence in the changing healthcare context. Adaptive expertise provides a theoretical and educational framework for understanding and developing the experts we need. In this discussion, Dr. Mylopoulos will present the imperative for adaptive expertise in healthcare, explore the cognitive science of adaptive expertise and describe the curricular strategies that support the development of adaptive expertise in medicine.

For more information on Dr. Mylopoulos and to register for the 24th Annual IAMSE Meeting, please visit www.IAMSEconference.org.

IAMSE Winter 2020 WAS Session 3 Highlights

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[The following notes were generated by Michele Haight, PhD.]

IAMSE Webinar Series, Winter 2020

Speakers: Sherry Jimenez and Jeremy Buchanan
Title: “Methods for Incorporating Opioid Education in Health Professions Curricula”
Series: How is Health Science Education Tackling the Opioid Epidemic?

  • To address the statewide opioid crisis in Tennessee, in July 2018, as part of the Tennessee Department of Health, Tennessee Together effort, the Commission on Pain and Addiction Medicine Education developed 12 core competencies for use as a guide in developing opioid education curricula.
  • Given the large number of health professions programs at LMU, the aims for interprofessional opioid education have been the following: integrate opioid education across the health professions’ curricula and connect the LMU students directly with the community to better learn challenges faced by patients, families, community service providers, etc.
  • The DO, PA and NP health professions collaborated in the development of a day-long, Controlled Drug Misuse Symposium in 2018 which focused on best practices for substance use disorder prevention and non-prescription treatment options.
  • Elements of this symposium included: pre/post survey questions, pre-reading materials and patient testimonials.
  • Lessons learned from this symposium: the symposium was too long and there was not sufficient time for meaningful interactions.
  • Two significant learner outcomes from this symposium were: increased knowledge about widespread controlled drug misuse and increased awareness of controlled drug misuse among themselves and others.
  • A second interprofessional symposium was implemented in 2019 which focused on the Synthetic Opioid Surge.
  • Aims for this symposium included: understanding the difference between synthetic opioid and opioids and describing different treatment models can contribute to positive health outcomes.
  • This symposium incorporated the same format as the first symposium with an additional QR code for question submission. The symposium was shortened to half day and included a one hour 15 min. simulation with a patient who had overdosed. This simulation included actual community service providers (paramedics, police officers, etc.) and Standardized Patients. Although this simulation was a valuable learning experience for all, it was cumbersome in terms of time and compromised the speakers who presented afterwards.
  • The 2020 symposium will be 4 hrs. long and focus on the relationship between adverse childhood events and opioid abuse. This event will occur in a much larger venue to better accommodate all interested parties and will be streamed to campuses in 4 other cities and 2 universities in the UK.
  • To increase opioid awareness LMU, in collaboration with its other health professions schools, has created a short video which explores the interprofessional aspects of a vehicular collision scenario. The aims for this film are to promote team-based care and guide appropriate communication and interaction with other health care professionals.
  • If you are interested in accessing this video or participating in the 2020 symposium (via streaming), please contact Dr. Jimenez or Mr. Buchanan at the following: Sherry.Jimenez@lmunet.edu, Jeremy.Buchanan@lmunet.edu
  • Final thoughts: the process to develop and implement both the symposia and the video have been stellar examples of meaningful interprofessional collaboration. These types of collaborations can serve as models for how to move forward with developing and implementing interprofessional education.

Suzanne Lady and Narda Robinson to Present a Panel on Educational Alternatives to Opioids

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The 2020 IAMSE Winter Webcast Audio Seminar Series is proving to be an engaging and exciting series! Each session will provide a comprehensive synopsis of the efforts to respond to the opioid crisis from the perspective of health science education and innovative curricula. We’ve lined up speakers from across the United States to shine a light on the topic across multiple landscapes in medical education. Our fourth session will feature Suzanne Lady and Narda Robinson.

Spinal Manipulation and Opioids: Navigating the Current Treatment Landscape
Presenter: Suzanne Lady, DC
Session: January 30, 2020 at 12pm Eastern Time

With the current opioid crisis, it is crucial to find alternative means for managing chronic pain. This session will explore the role of spinal manipulation used alone and with other types of active patient care to serve as one possible solution to the opioid dilemma.

Reduce or Eliminate the Need for Opioids by Instituting Scientific Integrative Medicine as First-line Care
Presenter: Narda Robinson, DO, MS, DVM, FAAMA
Session: January 30, 2020 at 12pm Eastern Time

In this talk, Dr. Robinson presents her 10-step program that better educates healthcare providers about ways to assess and treat pain, to practice better medicine, lessen burnout, and offer meaningful and effective integrative medical approaches based on science and evidence.

For more information and to register for the Winter 2019 Audio Seminar Series, please visit registration for individuals and institutions.

Manuscripts Still Being Accepted for the Medical Science Educator Special Section

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In the last quarter of 2020, Medical Science Educator, the journal of the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE), will be publishing a special journal section dedicated to the topic of “The Future of Health Sciences Education.”

The Editorial Board of Medical Science Educator is still soliciting article submissions on this topic and welcoming contributions in the selected formats of Innovation, Short Communication, Commentaries or Monograph. Please see our website www.medicalscienceeducator.org for a more detailed description of these article types and to submit your manuscript. All submissions will be peer-reviewed according to our regular review process. Accepted manuscripts will be collected in a special section in issue 30(4) or will be published in one of the regular issues thereafter.

Manuscripts to be considered for this special section must be submitted by April 1, 2020.

In your cover letter, please refer to the topic “Future of Health Sciences Education” to indicate that you would like to be included in the special section. See our journal website to review the Instructions for Authors.

I look forward to receiving your submissions.

Thank you,
Peter G.M. de Jong, PhD
Editor-in-Chief, Medical Science Educator

IAMSE Winter 2020 WAS Session 2 Highlights

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[The following notes were generated by Michele Haight, PhD.]

IAMSE Webinar Series, Winter 2020

Speaker: Paul George
Title: “Integrating Opioid Use Disorder and Medication Based Treatment into Undergraduate Medical Education”
Series: How is Health Science Education Tackling the Opioid Epidemic?

  • Rhode Island is the smallest state but one of the hardest hit by opioid overdose deaths.
  • Life expectancy in the US has decreased in part due to the opioid overdose epidemic.
  • Nationally, opioid prescription rates per population from 2000-2015 had a profound effect on the opioid overdose epidemic.
  • Due to appropriate education, current physician opioid prescribing habits have changed and opioid prescription rates have tapered off. However, opioid prescription rates still remain a contributing factor to opioid overdose deaths.
  • All medical school graduates need to be able to diagnose and treat opioid use disorder regardless of their specialty.
  • The governor of Rhode Island mandated that all medical students be DATA (Drug Addiction and Treatment Act of 2000) waiver trained. Brown Alpert Medical School (AMS) enhanced its existing UME opioid use disorder curriculum to meet this requirement. This curriculum was reviewed and certified by the AAAP so that all Brown (AMS) graduates were certified DATA waiver trained in the state of Rhode Island. (There is now a federal pathway for US medical schools to obtain national certification for DATA waiver training.)

The Brown (AMS) Substance/Opioid Use Disorder thematic Curriculum across the UME Spectrum includes the following:

  • Pre-Clerkship classroom curriculum: didactics on the science of pain, pharmacology of pain treatment, non-opioid and opioid pain treatments, non-pharmacologic treatment of pain
  • Pre-Clerkship “Doctoring” curriculum: behavioral change and substance use counseling, SBIRT (Screening and Behavioral Intervention and Referral for
    Treatment), screening 5 patients for substance abuse disorder providing intervention and referral for treatment for positive screens, 1.5 hrs. interprofessional workshop (paper-based cases/team plan of care)
  • 2 Week Clinical Skills Intercession Workshop (between years 2-3) pain management/opiates interprofessional 4 hr. workshop/patient panels/Standardized Patients
  • Clerkship curriculum: documenting 5 substance use disorder patients (Internal Medicine/Family Medicine) providing interventions and referrals for treatment for positive screens, interactive workshops on pain and pain management (Internal Medicine, Family Medicine and Psychiatry), cases/sessions on chronic pain, evaluation and treatment of substance use disorders and substance misuse didactic session on MAT (medically assisted treatment)
  • Proposed Year 4 curriculum mandatory 3hr. workshop with content on pain management and MAT-based cases

In partnership with the American Academy of Addiction Medicine, the Brown AMS curriculum also incorporates “outside” elements from the AAAM provider clinical support system.

  • Recommendations for creating a Substance/Opioid Use Disorder curriculum: Make the curriculum integrated and longitudinal, make the curriculum interprofessional, partner with key stakeholders, use a variety of teaching modalities, link the curriculum across UME, GME and CME. (Private practice and community physicians are a high priority group for opioid
    education.)
  • Final Thoughts: A waiver is not necessary for prescribing medications such as insulin or anti-hypertensives or oxycodone, etc., so what is the purpose of mandating a waiver for MAT for opioids? Perhaps it is time to rethink settings in which Methadone can be prescribed. LCME and ACGME need to include opioid education in their regulations.

A Review from Medical Science Educator from Dr. John Szarek

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Each month the IAMSE Publications Committee reviews published articles from Medical Science Educator. This month’s review, written by Dr. John L. Szarek, is taken from the article titled A Delphi Study to Determine Leveling of the Interprofessional Core
Competencies for Four Levels of Interprofessional Practice (doi:10.1007/s40670-018-00656-3) published in Medical Science Educator, Volume 29, (pages 389–398), 2019 by M.L. Koehn and S.C. Charles.

The accreditors of virtually all health professions schools have standards for interprofessional education (IPE) emphasizing the importance of IPE to health care delivery. Moreover, a growing body of evidence indicates that IPE has beneficial effects on learners’ attitudes, knowledge, skills, and collaborative competencies. Notwithstanding, health professions educators still struggle with the implementation of IPE into a packed curriculum. In 2011 (updated in 2016), the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) defined 38 (39 in the update) Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice. In the June 2019 issue of Medical Science Educator, Mary Koehn and Stephen Charles used a modified Delphi technique to gain a consensus on the leveling of the IPEC Core Competencies.

The Delphi method, which is widely used for consensus building, uses a questionnaire with multiple iterations sent to a panel of experts to develop a consensus of opinion. The authors recruited an expert panel from The Society for Simulation in Healthcare IPE Special Interest Group. The questionnaire consisted of the 38 IPEC Core Competencies which the panel members were asked to indicate the level of the learner for which each of the competencies was most appropriate (level 1-novice to level 4-experienced practitioner). The same questionnaire was used for each of the three rounds of the
Delphi. For the 2nd and 3rd rounds, the panel members were given the frequency distributions of the prior round for competencies not achieving consensus. After 3 rounds, a consensus was achieved on all but 4 of the competencies. The authors speculated that consensus on these 4 competencies was not reached due to the wording of the competencies, which is deliberately broad such that all competencies could be implemented in a novice to expert range, or the decreased response rate from the panel in round 3. The authors conclude that it is possible to level the competencies from novice to expert and that this guideline can be used in the implementation of the competencies.

Many of us involved in IPE are responsible for developing activities, managing logistics, etc. Besides aligning schedules, an issue all IPE educators contend with is that learners from different professions have varying levels of knowledge and experience. Further, it is somewhat overwhelming when one considers assuring that all students achieve 38 competencies in an already packed curriculum. This document will help us in aligning learners at the appropriate level for our IPE activities and provide a roadmap to aid in the deliberate design of IPE learning activities spanning the length of the program. Educators new to IPE will find this document helpful as they begin working with educators from other health professions in planning IPE activities. More expert educators will be able to use this to strengthen what they are already doing and consider building on this work for scholarship.

John L. Szarek, BPharm, PhD, CHSE
Professor and Director of Clinical Pharmacology
Education Director for Simulation
Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine
Member IAMSE Publications Committee

IAMSE on the Road at GRIPE 2020

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The IAMSE booth will be exhibiting at the annual meeting of the Group for Research in Pathology Education (GRIPE) in San Antonio, TX, USA on January 23 – 25, 2020. If you plan on attending this meeting, don’t forget to swing by the IAMSE booth and say hello!

Information on the 2020 GRIPE meeting can be found here.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Say Hello to Our Featured Member Robin Harvan!

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Our association is a robust and diverse set of educators, researchers, medical professionals, volunteers and academics that come from all walks of life and from around the globe. Each month we choose a member to highlight their academic and professional career, and see how they are making the best of their membership in IAMSE. This month’s Featured Member is Dr. Robin Harvan.

Robin Ann Harvan, EdD, FACE, FIAMSE
Professor and Director of Health Sciences Programs, Co-Chair of Interprofessional Education Committee
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences University

How long have you been a member of IAMSE?
When I was Director of the Office of Education at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, I completed the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) Essential Skills in Medical Education (ESME) Program. After relocating to Boston, I wanted to complete the IAMSE Fellowship requirements, so I joined the organization in 2015 and was inducted as an IAMSE Medical Educator Fellow in 2018.In your time with the association, what have you been up to? Committee involvement, conference attendance, WAS series, manuals, etc.? How have you interacted with IAMSE?

Since joining IAMSE, I have attended the annual meetings in California (2015), Vermont (2017), Nevada (2018) and Virginia (2019). My primary involvement with IAMSE has previously been focused on completing the fellowship requirements and interacting with mentors and fellows. I presented a poster on my fellowship study proposal in 2017 and the results of my study in an oral presentation in 2018 at the annual IAMSE meetings. The manuscript was accepted for publication in the Medical Science Educator journal and published online in September 2019.  [DeMasi, J., Harvan, R.A., and Luca, M. (2019). Online and In-Class Team-Based Learning in Undergraduate Immunology: a Comparative Analysis. Medical Science Educator. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs40670-019-00814-1.pdf]What has been your experience working on the 2020 Annual Meeting in Denver?

When I learned that the 2020 Annual Meeting would be in Denver where I lived and worked previously, I enthusiastically volunteered to serve on the Program Planning Committee. It was at our convening meeting of the committee via video conference, that we were asked to brainstorm a theme for the meeting. Given my personal history living in the Mile High City of Denver and my love of the Rocky Mountain region, I suggested the theme: Scaling New Heights: Envisioning the Future of Health Sciences Education, which was well-received and adopted by the committee. I have enjoyed working with the members of the committee and look forward to the 24th IAMSE Annual Meeting in Denver, June 13-16, 2020.What interesting things are you working on outside the Association right now? Research, presentations, etc.

I have deliberativey devoted my career to Interprofessional Education (IPE) and Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPCP) in Healthcare for over three decades. I co-chair the IPE Education Committee at MCPHS University in Boston and I am a member of the IPE Leadership Team across our three campuses to include Worchester and Manchester campuses. I also serve as Lead Evaluator and Co-Investigator on a $3.5M cooperative agreement with HRSA at the national Center for Integration of Primary Care and Oral Health (CIPCOH) at Harvard University. CIPCOH serves as a national resource for systems-level research on oral health integration into primary care training with special emphasis on training enhancements that will train primary care providers to deliver high quality, cost-effective, patient-centered care that promotes oral health, addresses oral health disparities and meets the unique needs of all communities https://cipcoh.hsdm.harvard.edu/.


As a member, what is a standout benefit that keeps you engaged in IAMSE?
The IAMSE professional community is the most outstanding benefit of membership that keeps me engaged. The opportunities to connect and collaborate with outstanding colleagues across the global community engaged in advancing and enhancing health sciences education are exceptional.Anything else that you would like to add?

IAMSE is interdisciplinary, interprofessional and international. The benefits of membership are outstanding. I am not only an advocate for IAMSE membership, I strongly endorse engagement of all who are members.

To find out more about the annual meeting in Denver, and to register, please go to www.iamseconference.org

IAMSE Winter 2020 WAS Session 1 Highlights

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[The following notes were generated by Michele Haight, PhD.]

IAMSE Webinar Series, Winter 2020

Speaker: Lisa Graves
Title: “Responding to the Opioid Crisis: An Educator’s View”
Series: How is Health Science Education Tackling the Opioid Epidemic?

  • Statistics from the current health science literature underscore a progressive increase in opioid-related deaths and highlight the global scope of the opioid crisis.
  • According to a 2017 bibliometric analysis in the NEJM, a one paragraph, Letter to the Editor published in 1980 in the NEJM (Porter & Jick) was largely responsible for advancing the opioid crisis through misinterpretation and misinformation.
  • The antecedents of the opioid crisis in the medical literature provide a unique educational opportunity for all medical educators to guide learners to better interrogate and evaluate the literature used in clinical decision-making.
  • Out of 43 papers reviewed in a 2019 scoping review for Substance Use Education in Medical Schools (Muzyk et al.), only one paper addressed opioids. The paucity of peer-reviewed literature targeting opioid use beckons medical educators to help fill this gap.
  • The “AFMC Response to the Opioid Crisis” is a competency-based, bilingual, online curriculum that is currently under development in Canada. The proposed curriculum is designed to be spiraled, integrated and interleaved across all years of medical student training. The anticipated completion date for the pilot curriculum is 2021. For more information visit: https://afmc.ca/priorities/opioids
  • Medical education strategies currently in use for addressing the opioid crisis include:
    Naloxone training for medical students
    DATA training waiver programs in the UME and GME curricula
    AAMC Opioid Crisis Summit, Washington DC, 2019
  • Recommendations for the development of a comprehensive Substance Use Disorder Curriculum include the following:
    • Engage a broad swath of stakeholders including patients, patients’
      families, community organizations, community physicians, etc. in
      the development of a curriculum.
    • Create a non-stigmatizing lexicon and structured behaviors to
      communicate, discuss, teach and interact with all Substance Use
    • Disorder team members, especially residents.
    • Fuse the perspectives of substance abuse treatment providers and
      pain management providers to address the many psycho-social and
      economic complexities associated with the opioid crisis.
    • Review curricular interventions that have already been done and build
      on these.
    • Share methods, strategies and approaches that have been successful
      and those that have not worked to help others create a more
      informed curriculum.
    • Ensure that the curriculum can be adapted across the physician
      training continuum, UME, GME, CPD.