ABSTRACT: Inspiring innovation in medical education
Traditionally, changes to medical education come from the top down, an approach that potentially misses important contributions from medical students, residents, faculty and staff. In order to provide an avenue for them to bring forward their ideas for educational improvements, the University of Minnesota Medical School sponsored the “What’s the Bright Idea?” contest. Through the contest, we sought to foster a culture of innovation and collaboration among faculty, staff and students. The contest included five phases: launch, idea submission, online voting, follow-up and implementation. Seventy-six ideas were submitted, and 902 people participated in the online voting. When asked in a follow-up survey whether the submitter would have developed their idea without the contest, 27% of respondents answered “no” and 18% answered “maybe.” Three-fourths stated the contest stimulated networking and collaboration. Four of the recommendations are now being implemented.
via Inspiring innovation in medical education. [Minn Med. 2014] – PubMed – NCBI.
Written by Brian S McGowan, PhD
Dr. McGowan has served in leadership positions in numerous medical educational organizations and commercial supporters and is a Fellow of the Alliance (FACEhp). He founded the Outcomes Standardization Project, launched and hosted the Alliance Podcast, and most recently launched and hosts the JCEHP Emerging Best Practices in CPD podcast. In 2012 he Co-Founded ArcheMedX, Inc, a healthcare informatics and e-learning company to apply his research in practice.
