Interview with Maya M. Hammoud, MD, MBA and Gregory W. Schneider, MD
Why did you feel that it was important to write Value-Added Roles for Medical Students?
Dr. Hammoud: Medical students are very motivated and capable of being integral parts of the health care team. Sharing ways to create value-added roles for medical students provides educators with ideas on how to integrate students in their health systems so they can learn while contributing to patients’ care.
Dr. Schneider: In a way, I feel like we have come full circle. Medical education is striving to recapture ways in which students can play vital roles within the health care team. We may no longer have students drawing blood on our patients, wheeling patients to the radiology suite, or running a quick urinalysis, but they can play other crucial roles. This book helps us envision these new roles for our students that benefit local health care systems and the students’ educational experiences, while retaining that former spirit of helping students feel essential.
How would you define a value-added role and what do you think is the biggest misconception about value-added roles for medical students?
Dr. Hammoud: Value-added roles allow students to contribute to patient care in a meaningful way while learning. Experiential learning that is well structured and assessed can stimulate intellectual curiosity and develop professional identity by promoting leadership and teamwork. The biggest misconception about value-added roles is the perception that students are being used for free labor that is not valuable to their academic development.
Dr. Schneider: The central features of value-added roles involve students taking on legitimate tasks within a local health care context that add value to that system and provide students experience with health systems science and clinical skills. I also like emphasizing the corollary benefit of an enriched educational experience for students that can be a factor in students seeing themselves as future physicians. The biggest misconception, from my perspective, is thinking of these roles as merely add-ons or some kind of volunteer experience. True value-added roles are genuine, although they may not appear so at first glance.
What new ideas, practices, or procedures do you hope your readers take away from Value-Added Roles for Medical Students ?
Dr. Hammoud: The book provides a range of topics and approaches depending on what the reader or educator is looking to learn or implement. My favorite part is reading all the examples because they provide very practical approaches to apply value-added roles in effective ways.
Dr. Schneider: I suppose it depends on different kinds of readers. For those who are drawn to the theoretical, there are a number of chapters that really provide well-grounded conceptual frameworks for thinking through the whole process of these types of programs from inception to assessment and evaluation. For those who like examples, the whole middle section is filled with great models that might generate ideas. Being involved with the editing, I loved hearing people’s stories of their successes and failures, what kept them going, and what approaches to managing change helped them the most.
What is the biggest challenge when implementing value-added roles for medical students?
Dr. Hammoud: The biggest challenge when implementing value-added roles is getting the buy in from all stakeholders to develop and implement a well-structured program. Sometimes, significant resources might be required upfront to implement the program. You need to have the ability to demonstrate the value while visioning.
Dr. Schneider: At least in my experience, ensuring enough resources, as a program evolves, emerges as a daunting challenge. Those resources are multidimensional, from having well-trained and committed preceptors and staff to curricular support, and they require ongoing nurturing. Administrators may change and may not see the value or may see the program in a different way. Working with different interested parties to learn from their changing perspectives can make a big difference.
What about value-added roles for medical students makes them so important for the modern health care system and modern medical education?
Dr. Hammoud: Value-added roles provide the experiential learning for students to develop into effective system thinkers. The ability to interact with the system from different perspectives and exposing the students to the breadth of health systems science domains will simply help them develop into better doctors!
Dr. Schneider: In a health care system (or systems or non-system) as complicated as ours, it is vital for our students to appreciate the whole range of what we now call health systems science: delivery models, social determinants of health, population health, health informatics, quality improvement, etc. As we also appreciate the importance of active and experiential learning, it makes so much sense to engage our students in real ways in the health systems that make up our local environments. When students experience having an impact, whether on patients that they helped navigate through a labyrinthine care network or on a clinic’s performance on a health metric, it sticks with them and broadens their sense of what a physician can do.
What do you hope happens after people read Value-Added Roles for Medical Students?
Dr. Hammoud: I hope that readers get inspired to communicate with others about the importance of value-added roles and/or decide to implement more value-added roles at their institutions if they are in the position to do so.
Dr. Schneider: On the most basic level, I hope that educators come away inspired: You can do this! Every educational environment is different, but there are enough examples and strategies in this short book to plant seeds in a wide variety of contexts. My hope is that readers start having discussions at their institutions about ways to start a new program or tweak one that is already underway. Even working on this book, I took away several ideas that we have implemented in our own value-added program. We are always learning, and trying out new educational endeavors keeps us challenged.
Is there anything else about the book you’d like readers to know?
Dr. Hammoud: The book is very rich and has a lot of practical information on implementing value-added roles for medical students. I hope readers get inspired by all the examples and commit to implementing value-added roles at their institutions.
Dr. Schneider: This book really serves as a testament to the diverse and creative ways that educators are involved in making a difference for students and for the broader US health care system. I truly enjoyed working with so many people from different institutions and hearing their stories. If I were encountering the book for the first time, I would probably skim the examples first, just to get inspired and then go from there.
Dr. Maya Hammoud is the J. Robert Willson Research Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Professor of Learning Health Sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School. She is the Chief of Women’s Health Division and Associate Chair for Education. Dr. Hammoud holds many leadership roles nationally, including senior adviser for Medical Education Innovations at the American Medical Association (AMA) with a focus on health systems science and coaching. She has over 70 peer-reviewed publications and has published three books. Dr. Hammoud completed her MD and MBA degrees and residency training at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Gregory Schneider teaches medical students at all levels, concentrating on clinical skills, ethics, and the social factors involved in health. His career has focused on higher and medical education with over 20 years of teaching. Dr. Schneider spent a decade teaching undergraduate liberal arts, earning tenure at a liberal arts college, and more than 10 years teaching at the medical school level. He has practiced primary care in academic health, student health care, and community health center settings. These experiences have all contributed to his appreciation of the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, empathy, and working as part of a diverse caregiving team.
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