Below are highlights from the Medical Advisory Committee (MAC) meeting held on Tuesday, April 12, 2016:
Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA)
- Dr. Maryellen Gusic discussed ensuring competence through authentic assessment and how EPAs will affect undergraduate medical education.
- An “entrustable professional activity” is a task or responsibility that faculty entrust to a trainee to execute [without supervision {in Graduate Medical Education}], once adequate competence has been obtained.
- Rationale for use of EPAs in UME include the importance of assessing readiness for transitions and to address existing gaps between residency director’s expectations and skills of entering residents.
- Objective assessment is important for learners, teachers, the healthcare system, and, ultimately, for patients.
- Dr. Gusic will be examining the current curriculum and investigating how to best teach and assess EPAs.
Pre-Submission Grant Review Program
- Dr. Kodi Ravichandran discussed his department’s efforts in assisting junior faculty to gain funding. The recently hired junior faculty in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology (MIC) have all been successful in acquiring their first receive RO1 funding in the first three years.
- Some steps MIC has taken to help include:
- Encourage faculty to apply within their first year of recruitment/starting their new position.
- Use a mentoring committee
- Structure of the grant review process (meeting, writing, committee speaking with one voice, iterative editing phases)
- Planning and timing: requires ~3-6 months lead time
- Next steps? (read, encourage, and repeat the steps above …)
- MIC’s current success rate with this process has also helped created camaraderie within the MIC and also promote interactions between junior and senior faculty.
Promotion & Tenure (P&T)
- Dr. Susan Pollart discussed recommendations to look at P&T differently, reviewed issues related to P&T, shared qualitative comments from the Faculty Forward Engagement Survey, and examined the UVA Provost and SOM tenure and non-tenure policies
- This is just the start of the conversation. Please contact Dr. Pollart with your question at sps2s@virginia.edu.
The next meeting will be Tuesday, May 10, 2016, in the BIMS classroom. (McKim first floor, across from Sandridge Auditorium)