Five Questions With: Dr. Paul George

"IN NATIONAL discussions about the direction of medical education, I hear time and time again, how the content we propose to teach in this program is so important for future physicians."

Dr. Paul George is a member of the department of family medicine at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School. He is co-course leader for the clinical skills clerkship and teaches in the family medicine clerkship. The program has received a $1 million grant from the American Medical Association for its innovative work in community-based primary care medicine.

PBN: How many years of coursework does the new dual degree, Md-ScM, require? Is it basically one supplemental year compared to a standard MD?
GEORGE:
The new Primary Care-Population Medicine program (MD-ScM) program is designed specifically to be four years in length (although there is an option for students to extend their research within the program for a fifth year). Students in the program will take an additional nine courses, spread out across four years, with as much integration as possible with the medical school curriculum. One of the unique aspects of this program is that it is not just an extra year tacked on to medical school. Instead, because of the integration, students will learn how to integrate the clinical sciences with population health.

PBN: The program covers health disparities, social determinants of health, health systems, health policy, biostatistics, epidemiology, and leadership skills, with a focus on inter-professional teams. Do you have faculty lined up to cover each area, and how many faculty total will cover the program in its first year?
GEORGE:
We are very fortunate to have a robust faculty teaching in the Primary-Care Population Medicine program. Just about all of our current faculty, such as our clerkship directors, will teach and have administrative responsibility in the program. We are reaching out to departments and other schools at Brown, such as the School of Public Health and the Taubman Center, to teach in the course. And we’ve recruited new faculty, such as a lawyer with extensive teaching experience, to teach in the program. All said, faculty for the program will likely be greater than 100.

PBN: How excited are you to be offering training to medical students that you’ve said you wish you could have received yourself?
GEORGE:
I am absolutely thrilled. In national discussions about the direction of medical education, I hear time and time again, how the content we propose to teach in this program is so important for future physicians. We’ve found a way to deliver it. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve thought that I wish I had more training in how insurance systems work or how to navigate a patient through more complex social situations. Students from this program will be well versed to handle an increasingly complex health care system and will be poised to be leaders once they graduate from the program.

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PBN: The $1 million grant from the AMA is substantial – how many years of the Primary Care-Population Medicine program will it cover? And will students doing the dual degree program have to pay the tuition for the extra courses compared to a standard medical degree?
GEORGE:
The AMA grant is five years in length and extends through 2018. This grant has given us so much more than financial support however. It has given us access to some of the most brilliant medical education minds in the United States, to learn their thoughts about where medical education should be heading. It also gives the medical school a substantial voice with licensing boards and other policymakers as decisions are made nationally about our medical education system.

PBN: There’s a perception that primary care doctors forfeit the ability to do as much science as some of their peers; does this program turn that around?
GEORGE:
Yes, the Master’s degree in Population Medicine will require that our students engage in scholarly work. Their Master’s thesis will require them to submit their research to a peer-reviewed journal for potential publication. It is our hope that students continue to be scholarly throughout the rest of their careers. We want to encourage students to become “clinicians-plus.” We want them to see patients, but do something else, such as become a director of a Department of Public Health or a Health Services researcher. Primary care can be a driving force for change in the United States health care system and we want to give students the ability to be leaders in doing so.

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