Our guest today is Dr. Benjamin Chan, Associate Dean of Admissions and Idaho Affairs at the University of Utah's School of Medicine and host of the Talking Admissions & Med Student Life podcast. Dr. Chan earned his bachelors at Stanford and his MD at UUCOM. He then trained in General Psychiatry at George Washington University in DC.  He has also completed a fellowship in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, has an MBA from University of Utah and a Masters in Education from the University of Cincinnati. He is also an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and inpatient attending physician at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Dr. Chan, can you give an overview of the Utah COM’s curriculum focusing on the more distinctive elements of the program? [2:20]

We are an allopathic medical school, which means we offer the MD degree, which is four years long. We are known for innovation, in particular trying new teaching techniques. TBL-based learning is new, and it’s essentially students teaching each other – they break off into small groups, do cases, debate, and learn.

We also have a bench-to-bedside bio innovation project. There was a question of how to take bench research to help patients more quickly, so we decided to break up students into multi-disciplinary teams, including other graduate students like in computer science, biology, or physics, and the teams interview and shadow doctors. We provide some lab space and startup money and they go back to their lab and brainstorm ideas and design prototypes. We have an annual gala when everyone comes together to present their designs, judges interview and play with prototypes, and there are winners – it’s essentially a science fair on steroids.

One winner a few years back is currently in stage 3 trials with a UV light that kills bacteria. It is a catheter that kills bacteria before you insert it into the skin, which could have huge implications, since you don’t always have the sterilization capability.

The curriculum is divided into four core areas that students participate in throughout their four years at UCOM: Service, Scholarship, Mentorship; Clinical medicine; Medical Sciences; and Medical Arts.  Clinical medicine and Medical Sciences are what most people think of when you talk about medical school. How do the other two areas play out in the Utah experience? [5:25]

Students learn a lot of hard facts – anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology. How does one take that information and communicate it with your patients? You can have all the clinical and scientific knowledge in the world, but if you can’t share it in a way that makes sense to your patients, that does you no good. So there is a science to medicine, and there’s also an art to it. We have medical humanities, so we talk about death and dying, how to interact with diverse patient populations, and how to deal with bioethical issues as they arise, which is incredibly important. With service, scholarship and mentorship, we pride ourselves on the fact that our students stay up-to-date on the latest news and research, so the vast majority participate in a research project of some sort. We also have a formalized mentorship program.

I noticed in reviewing your site and preparing for the call that there is a strong focus on “practice-based learning.” Can you describe that approach in the medical school setting? [11:26]

The first two years of med school are historically classroom-based, and then very clinically-based.