Integrating DEI into the SOM Quantitative Medicine Block

Background: School of Medicine (SOM) block chairs and course directors seek to find opportunities to integrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion elements in their sessions. Some subject areas such as the Health of New Mexico Block provide plenty of opportunities whereas blocks such as the Quantitative Medicine offer fewer opportunities for DEI integration. We resolved to do better at DEI integration, regardless of the challenges. Methods: Case study. The Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) segment of the course focuses on many of the details of this study design. The instructor informed students that many RCTs often fail to recruit participants from diverse ethnic, socioeconomic, racial, educational level, or self-identified gendered backgrounds. This didactic also described the lack of generalizability from RCTs due to the participation by only thin segments of the US population. Around the studio classroom students saw on flipcharts the names of groups underrepresented in US RCTs: Hispanics; Native Americans; Women; certain Age Groups; lower socioeconomic groups; and, an open-ended category for “Other.” Students were asked to gather around the flipchart of their choice. They were asked to brainstorm on barriers facing these groups and ways that they, as future physicians might recruit patients from these underrepresented groups. Results: We were surprised by the enthusiastic and creative responses of most students to this exercise. Student strategies focused on outreach to underrepresented communities and finding ways to overcome the logistical barriers to participation. We will share some noteworthy students’ suggestions. Conclusion: Faculty members’ commitment to find ways to integrate DEI even in the most unlikely segments of the SOM curriculum can yield surprising and gratifying results

Sample Questions Formulated by Medical Students for Block Assignment

Medical students in the Quantitative Medicine Block completed an Evidence Based Practice (EBP) assignment worth 10% of the final Block grade. The question formulation segment was worth 50% of the assignment score. Students received instructions with an designated subject and some parameters for developing their own EBP questions using the rubric. This supplementary material offers some noteworthy formulated student questions

Question formulation skills training using a novel rubric with first-year medical students

Objective: The research used an assessment rubric to measure medical students’ improvement in question formulation skills following a brief evidence-based medicine (EBM) training session conducted by a health sciences librarian.Method: In a quasi-experimental designed study, students were assessed on their pre-instructional skills in formulating answerable EBM questions, based on a clinical scenario, using a rubric. Following their training, they were assessed using the same scenario and rubric. Student pre- and post-test scores were compared using a paired t-test.Results: Students demonstrated statistically significant improvement in their question formulation skills on their post-instructional assessments. The average score for students on the pre-test was 45.5 (SD 11.1) and the average score on the post-test was 65.6 (SD 5.4) with an increase of 20.1 points on the 70-point scale, p&lt;0.001.Conclusion: The brief instructional session aided by the rubric improved students’ performance in question formulation skills.</jats:p

Question Formulation Skills Training Using a Rubric with First-Year Medical Students. Dataset

The attached dataset consists of survey responses organized in the following manner. Column 1: De-identified student number Column 2: Cohort Class of 2022 Column 3: Pre-Test Score