SHS4 is a course for Application Phase medical students which meets monthly on alternating Mondays and Fridays year round from March to February. The days are composed of topics that need a deeper dive than time has allowed for in students’ prior medical training and content directly relates to their clinical activities.
SHS4 is a course for Application Phase medical students which meets monthly on alternating Mondays and Fridays year round from March to February. The days are composed of topics that need a deeper dive than time has allowed for in students’ prior medical training and content directly relates to their clinical activities.
We are seeking new faculty members for Population Health and RICE sections. Qualified candidates may be physician, social science, arts and/or chaplaincy faculty. Please see below for more details.
Please submit inquiries including current CV and paragraph about your interest in teaching (and which component) to Courtney Lewis at Courtney_lewis@med.unc.edu
More information about the course and its components is below:
Social and Health Systems 4 is a required course for all Application Phase medical students based at the Chapel Hill campus of the UNC School of Medicine. It is a year-long course that meets monthly from March through the following February. It provides a setting in which students can reflect on and discuss aspects of the practice of medicine that they will encounter in their clinical experiences, but may not otherwise be a part of the formal curriculum in the clinical clerkships. The course includes two component content areas: (A) Population Health, and (B) Critical Reflection, Inter-professional Education (IPE), Advanced Communication Skills and Ethics (RICE). Each of these three content areas is described in more detail below. Each day will be structured around an overall theme, opening with a keynote Grans Rounds address/ group discussion, then breaking out into small group sessions in the two major content areas, with a daily schedule as follows:
Daily Schedule:
8:00 am – 8:50 am: Grand Rounds
9:00 am – 10:20 am: Reflection, IPE, Communication Skills and Ethics (RICE) seminar
1:00 pm – 2:20 pm: Application of Principles of Population Health to Clinical Care
Application of Principles of Population Health to Clinical Care
The population health seminar series will focus on critical appraisal of the medical literature and an exploration of key concepts in population health, such as clinical preventive services, health insurance and healthcare financing, patient safety, social determinants of health, and health disparities. The students will meet in groups of approximately 13 students, together with a clinical faculty mentor with expertise in population health. Each session will open with a student-led journal club presentation, during which a student will present an original research article that addresses clinical question they have encountered on their current clinical rotation. The remainder of the session will be a facilitated discussion on the population health topic of the month. At the end of each session, a brief introduction to the following month’s topic will be provided. The students will be given brief questions or assignments to consider during the next month in the course of patient care, to focus their learning on the population health topic that will be discussed in the subsequent session.
Critical Reflection, Inter-professional Education (IPE), Advanced Communication Skills and Ethics (RICE)
RICE will be taught in small group sections, each consisting of approximately twelve students, with a clinical faculty mentor and a social sciences/humanities/ethics mentor for each small group. It will focus on enhancing skill and inquiry in 4 key areas: (1) Critical Reflection, (2) IPE, (3) Advanced Communication Skills, and (4) Ethics.
(Critical) Reflection: Students have a crucial opportunity to pause in the midst of busy clinical routines to notice their experience of the reality of caring for patients, examining and interpreting their reactions to particular events and encounters through the lens of their prior abstract learning and the example of their teachers and peers doing clinical work. Previously, this informal and sometimes hidden curriculum was not discussed. We hope by bringing this learning into the formal curriculum to assist students in the development of a professional identity that is resonant with their ideals. Small-group conversations with peers and mentors help them gain critical perspective on their new roles (reflexivity), as well as the examples provided by clinical faculty, and efforts they have made in challenging situations. Such reflection is part of ethical work, but it also extends beyond, to students’ new roles in shaping outcomes for patients and consideration of organizational and social structures of health care and society (remembering SHS1-2 and our discussions these larger forces influence patients and students’/physicians experience of illness through lenses of culture, race, gender, SES, family, religion etc.). A variety of media (short writing prompts centered on clinical experience, exposure to performance and art) will be employed. Social sciences/humanities faculty will enrich this conversation with their insights and perspectives and students will be able to incorporate these ways of thinking into clinical care.
Inter professional learning and practice: Students have the opportunity to work with and engage in discussion with trainees from other professions who care for patients in our complex health system — nursing, pharmacy, social work, chaplaincy, allied health, and more—so they can learn from and appreciate their contributions to patient care on ward and clinic teams, and work together at the highest levels of everyone’s training. (Inter professional Education = IPE.) We will have some activities where these students will join/contribute to our seminars. Students will also be asked to reflect on their work in teams within their profession with colleagues and supervisors.
(Advanced) Communication skills: Students will learn and practice specific advanced communication skills to supplement the practice they are able to gain in clerkships particularly around end-of-life issues, transitions of care, shared decision making, working with trauma exposed individuals, motivating patients to change behaviors they wish to change that are detrimental to their health and serving as patient, self and advocates within the hierarchy of medicine.
Ethics: Students have the opportunity to apply methods of ethical analysis & decision making to particular situations from their clinical work. They build on conceptual foundations developed in SHS1 and SHS2. Students will gain confidence in identifying and describing ethical concerns, develop frameworks for ethical decision making, and also learn to appreciate the value of continuing ethical uncertainty and debate. The kinds of cases considered each week are guided by seminar leaders, with actual cases culled from students.