Note: A PDF version of this statement is available here.

The following statement was sent to ALL MD students from Dr. Charles Prober, M.D., Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education on 10-DEC-07 at 15:06 PST:

As part of our efforts to enhance clinical education and as highlighted in the Spring Medical Education Newsletter, and Dean Pizzo’s Newsletter of November 19th, the School of Medicine (SOM) is developing a new program for medical students called Educators-4-CARE. This program is designed to further enhance instruction in the acquisition of clinical skills, including history taking, physical examination, clinical decision making, evidence based medicine, and professionalism. Student interactions with E4C faculty will be longitudinal, beginning during the SMS I year and extending through the clinical clerkships. The program aims to foster the development in each of our students of four key qualities embodied in effective physicians: Compassion, Advocacy, Responsibility and Empathy (CARE).

After recruiting a program director, we plan to engage and train SOM faculty and Clinician/Educators. These faculty will begin meeting as early as the spring of 2008 to complete planning and development of their approach to teaching and mentorship. Our goal is to have E4C program in place in time for our 2008 incoming class. Each E4C faculty member, working from a shared curriculum, will guide five to six students from each entering class through their acquisition and refinement of clinical skills. The school’s plan is for these skills to be taught by Stanford faculty and Clinician/Educators with active clinical practices. A student’s E4C mentor will serve as an ongoing role model for professionalism and the doctor-patient interaction throughout the student’s time at Stanford, in addition to serving as advisors for their student cohorts.

The E4C program will consolidate a number of the teaching programs and activities in the school’s curriculum. For example, this new program will ensure that students in the Practice of Medicine (POM) program have a dedicated preceptor with whom they consistently work every week over the first two years. Each of these faculty will dedicate substantial time to this activity, and will work closely with one another to ensure uniformly excellent teaching for all students. The close mentoring relationships that result will be continued during clinical years, when these advisors will have dedicated time for mentoring and continued growth of clinical skills. In order to have sufficient resources with which to create this new and exciting program we have needed to redirect a substantial portion of the resources from several existing programs and activities, in addition to committing the resources from my office for new program development for 2008-2009.

A number of you have written to me about how the creation of this new E4C program might affect a particular individual teaching in the existing programs in this area. Under university policy, however, and consistent with the principles of privacy embodied in California law, Stanford is not able to discuss personnel matters relating to particular employees with students, other employees, alumni or the general public -- whether prior to or after personnel-related decisions are made.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this program and my personal commitment to enhancing the educational experience of all Stanford medical students with each of you. I can assure you that each and every one of my decisions is based upon one guiding principle: to optimize the use of our educational resources to assure the best education and training experience that we can offer.