Introduction: What does it mean to be a physician and practice medicine? The usual answers to this significant question include the following: physicians promote individual and community health, prevent human suffering, relieve suffering caused by illness or disease when it does occur, prevent untimely death, pursue knowledge and truth as they relate to the human condition, and apply knowledge and truth—tempered with wisdom—in managing issues of health and disease in the care of patients, society, and the world community.
In reality, every physician answers the question of what it means to be a physician and practice medicine in their own individual way. One’s true answers consist of the efforts and the actions that make up the minutes, hours, days, and years of a physician’s professional life. There is no final endpoint to the process of becoming and being a medical doctor. As physicians, we are always in the process of becoming; we are always “practicing medicine”. Medical school does not create physicians. Medical school lays the foundation upon which the clinical and professional life of a physician is continually built and grows. With these ideas foremost in our minds and hearts, the faculty and staff of the Colleges of the University of Washington School of Medicine recognize both the great privilege and solemn responsibility that has been entrusted to us in the training of medical students throughout medical school.
Colleges Program Key Priorities
- Clinical skills development in Foundations in the Foundations of Clinical Medicine (FCM) course;
- Professional identity formation across 4 years, including longitudinal coaching and mentoring; and
- Relationship and community building within Colleges groups – dinners, celebrations, vertical/peer advising.
Structure: Students are assigned upon matriculation to a Colleges small group, which consists of one College faculty mentor (a teaching physician) and a group of 4-5 other students. Each College faculty works with their assigned students throughout their entire medical school career, serving as a longitudinal coach and mentor. There are 8 Colleges throughout the WWAMI region (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho), each with 20-50 students and 4-10 faculty, depending on the size of the regional campus / cohort.
UWSOM WWAMI College Faculty – WWAMI Retreat – May 2024
Program: The Colleges program begins at Orientation to medical school, when students are introduced to the profession of medicine and to their longitudinal College faculty and their peer group. Each student meets with their assigned College faculty during regular intervals throughout medical school, building on a working relationship to support students in their growth towards becoming physicians. Students continue regular check-ins with their assigned faculty, to discuss clinical skills development in FCM as well as personal and professional growth.
College faculty collaborate with their student and others to support progress and completion of required components of the curriculum (maintained in student portfolios), academic and career counseling (in partnership with our colleagues in Student Affairs and individual departments), and more. As part of their support team, College Heads and College faculty have access to their own students’ academic files and receive copies of letters sent to their students regarding their academic progress and modifications in their academic plans.
When the Foundations of Clinical Medicine course begins in Immersion, students frequently learn in their College small groups – particularly for hospital tutorials. College faculty teach in FCM course and provide coaching and feedback on clinical skills, including interview and physical exam skills, clinical reasoning and interpretation skills, communications, and other professional skills. As longitudinal mentors and coaches, College faculty do not engage in evaluation or grading (all of their feedback is formative).
Students also join their College faculty and peer students for reflections and conversations around personal and professional identity formation, Colleges dinners and/or community gatherings, peer advising events to encourage support across medical school classes, and more. Meeting in stable small groups both in and outside the classroom is intentional – the Colleges program aims to build trusting, supportive, relationship-centered teams in which each person can experience being known as a unique individual, a sense of meaningful belonging, and an environment which we hope contributes to growth, flourishing and success for each of our students.