Have you heard that Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine is enrolling its first class? Not only that, but it’s re-imagining medical education with a revolutionary approach intertwining clinical and didactic experience throughout the four years, minimal use of lectures, and a case-based curriculum. Let’s find out more from the program’s Associate Dean of Admissions.

Interview with Dr. Lindia Willies-Jacobo, Associate Dean for Admissions at Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine [Show Summary]

Our guest today is the Associate Dean for Admissions at Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, which is recruiting its first class. In the process its re-creating medical education from the ground up – intertwining clinical and didactic experiences throughout the four years of its program, making minimal use of lectures, and developing a case-based curriculum. Did I mention that it’s tuition-free for the first 5 classes?

Kaiser Medical School: State-of-the-Art, Patient-Focused, and Free [Show Notes]

Our guest today is Dr. Lindia Willies-Jacobo, Associate Dean for Admissions at the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. While the KP School of Medicine may be new, Dr. Willies-Jacobo is not at all new to the field of med school admissions. She earned her MD at UCSD and served there as a professor of pediatrics from 1992 to 2019. For 22 of those years she was also the Assistant Dean for Diversity and Community Partnerships and Director of the Program in Medical Education-Health Equity.

Dr. Willies-Jacobo, Kaiser-Permanente is one of the country’s largest NFP health plans with over 12 million members and almost 23,000 member doctors. Why is it going into the medical education business? [2:38]

Having led the field in terms of health care delivery, Kaiser-Permanente (KP) has been in the business of training doctors for quite some time, often after they finish medical school. This seems like the natural next step for us. The concept of being able to introduce KP models earlier are essential for an integrated healthcare system.

What do you feel is missing in the field? How is KP filling it? [3:45]

The way healthcare delivery is structured is not accessible to every patient that comes in the door. The current model we practice is, a patient arrives in clinic and a doctor tries to assess the immediate needs of a patient rather than thinking more broadly about the environment the patient lives in and better integrating population health, the patient, and family. In other words, we are trying to think beyond the therapeutic and reimagine medicine so that we better integrate how a patient engages in our environment with our medical diagnosis.

You and your team have the opportunity to develop a curriculum that reflects KP’s priorities and frustrations with current medical education. Can you give us an overview of the Kaiser Medical School Curriculum? [7:10]

We are going to be a case-based curriculum, and are not going to be teaching utilizing a lecture format. All learning will happen in small teams. We are matriculating 48 students in 2020 who will be divided into cohorts of eight. All teaching will be taking place with two faculty preceptors. We will be operating a flipped classroom model with team-based learning, and engaging with a PCP from year one, and essentially putting into practice what they are learning every single day. Other unique features are that we will not be teaching anatomy using cadavers, instead availing ourselves of technology. We will be using virtual and augmented reality with organ systems and the enti...