Definitions and Explanations of Selected Terms Used in This Supplement

The AAMC Graduation Questionnaire (GQ) is an annual survey of graduating medical students that has been administered by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) since 1978. The 2010 GQ consisted of 36 questions (267 items) that covered a wide variety of topics including student demographics, education experiences, student abuse and student indebtedness. For more information, see the GQ Web site at http://www.aamc.org/meded/gq. ACGME is the acronym for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which is responsible for the accreditation of post-MD training programs in the United States. Accreditation is accomplished through a peer-review process and is based upon established standards and guidelines. For more information, see http://www.acgme.org. Active learning is a term used to describe educational methods (such as small-group discussions, tutorials, and laboratory exercises) that require students to be active participants in the learning process. These methods contrast with lecture formats, where someone is speaking to the students. AHEC stands for Area Health Education Center. These federally funded centers create collaborative community-based education and training experiences for health professionals, health professions students, and primary care residents through educational linkages between academic health science centers and the communities they serve. Ambulatory clinic. (See: Ambulatory setting.) Ambulatory setting is any venue where medical care is provided to patients who are not admitted to a hospital for an overnight stay. Basic science is a term given to curriculum content that is not specific to the clinical disciplines of medicine or medical practice. The basic science course work is taught, typically, in the first two years of medical school. The individual disciplines that contribute to the basic science content are referred to as “the sciences basic to medicine.” Biopsychosocial model is a term that has come to be applied to a way of thinking about medical care that explicitly recognizes the psychological, social, and cultural dimensions of a patient's illness. Block-style curriculum is a way of organizing the curriculum in which students are introduced to the basic science principles that apply to a particular organ system, on a system-by-system basis, rather than being presented with a series of individual basic science courses. Careers in Medicine (CIM) is a program of the AAMC designed to assist students in fully understanding their specialty options and in selecting and applying to a residency program that best suits their career objectives. For more information, see www.aamc.org/students/cim/. Case-based teaching is a teaching method that uses a patient case (actual or created) to stimulate discussion, questioning, and problem solving and reasoning on issues pertaining to the basic sciences and clinical disciplines. CBX is the acronym for computer-based examination. Clerkships are educational experiences of 4–12 weeks duration that provide students with concentrated periods of exposure to patients in inpatient or ambulatory settings. The focus of learning is on the clinical manifestations, the diagnosis, and management of diseases specific to a clinical discipline (e.g., internal medicine, pediatrics). (See also: Core clerkships.) Community-based experiences are educational experiences for students that generally take place in the offices of physicians who are practicing full-time in the community (as opposed to being on the faculty of the medical school). Some community-based experiences occur in other venues such as homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, prisons, and community clinics. Contact hours are the amount of time in the curriculum when students are in contact with teaching faculty. The time they are in contact can be specifically quantified (e.g., hours in lectures, seminars, clinical rounds). Continuing medical education (CME) refers to the educational activities that practicing physicians engage in to advance their knowledge and skills in the practice of medicine. In many states, physicians are required to participate in a prescribed number of hours of accredited CME activities to maintain their licenses to practice medicine. (See also: Undergraduate medical education; Graduate medical education.) Continuity experience/clinic is an assigned educational experience that allows students to follow the same patients over a prolonged period of time. Core clerkships. The word “core” indicates the six clerkships required by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). These clerkships are in the disciplines of family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and surgery. (See also: Clerkships.) The Curriculum Management and Information Tool (CurrMIT) database is a national online database that medical schools can use to document and manage their curricula. The dean's tax is the percentage of clinical revenue that clinical departments must contribute to the medical school under the provisions of a school's faculty practice plan. Didactic instruction is the term used most often to refer to information conveyed through lectures. (See also: active learning.) DxR. Originally developed as computer-based patient simulation software, the commercially available software includes over 60 patient cases, Diagnostic Reasoning Management and Case Authoring utilities, the Clinical Competency Exam Software, the Student Activity Record Utility, and the Multi-Case Performance Utility. ERAS is the acronym for the Electronic Residency Application Service. ERAS is a service that uses the Internet to transmit residency applications and supporting credentials from medical schools to residency program directors. For more information, see www.aamc.org/students/eras/. (See also: NRMP; the Match.) Evidence-based medicine refers to the use, by physicians in practice, of diagnostic techniques, medications, and other therapies based on evidence supporting the effectiveness of the approaches under consideration. Faculty development refers to the professional development activities that are intended to improve the teaching and research skills of faculty. Formative assessment is a process by which assessment of student performance leads to feedback intended to improve performance, rather than simply documenting that performance. (See also: Summative assessment.) A generalist curriculum consists of a group of learning experiences intended to orient students to the principles and practice of primary care medicine. Graduate medical education (GME) is the formal training that physicians receive after graduation from medical school that prepares them for the practice of one of the specialties of medicine. Physicians train for three to seven years beyond medical school, depending on their specialty choice. (See also: Undergraduate medical education; Continuing medical education.) History taking is the process by which physicians obtain from patients' information that is needed to provide optimal medical care. Horizontal integration of the curriculum is the integration of thematic or topic-specific content throughout a year of the curriculum without regard for the organization of individual courses. (See also: Vertical integration of the curriculum.) Humanism in medicine is a term used to acknowledge that, in caring for patients, physicians must be attentive to the nonbiological dimensions of patients' illnesses. Interdisciplinary refers to collaboration across disciplines. Internship denotes the first year of graduate medical education. Interprofessional refers to the education of students studying different professions (e.g., medicine, nursing, social work, pharmacy, dentistry, physical therapy) in the same educational setting. It also refers to the professions working together for the best care of the patient. LCME is the acronym for the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the body that accredits MD-granting schools in the United States and Canada. For more information, see www.lcme.org. The Medical School Objectives Project (MSOP) is an initiative of the AAMC that seeks to develop a consensus within the medical education community on the attributes (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) that medical students should possess at the time of graduation, to set forth learning objectives for the medical school curriculum based on those attributes, and to assist medical schools in implementing changes in their curricula that will ensure that student have opportunities to achieve those objectives. For more information, see www.aamc.org/meded/msop/. Medline is an online database of articles published in peer reviewed medical journals that can be searched to obtain references on specific topics. Mission-based management/budgeting is a management approach that bases organizational decision making on a clear understanding of the organization's revenue streams and how those revenues might be allocated in support of the organization's mission. NBME subject examinations are discipline-specific examinations constructed by the National Board of Medical Examiners for use by medical school faculties in assessing student performance. For more information, see www.nbme.org. NRMP is the acronym for the National Residency Matching, a private, not-for-profit corporation that manages the process by which graduating medical students are matched to a residency program in the specialty of their choice. For more information, see www.nrmp.org. OSCE stands for objective structured clinical examination, a method that assesses in a structured, objective manner an examinee's performance of specified clinical tasks. Standardized patients are sometimes used to help carry out OSCEs. Outpatients are patients who are cared for in venues other than a hospital inpatient unit. Population medicine refers to activities intended to evaluate and manage the health needs of a specific population. Population may be defined as a geographic community, a patient panel (that population for whom a physician has health care responsibilities), or a group of persons with a particular demographic characteristic (e.g., age, gender, economic, cultural, educational). A preceptorship generally refers to a learning experience in which a student is assigned to spend a predetermined amount of time (e.g., an afternoon a week, a month, six weeks) with a practicing physician, observing and participating in the physician's practice activities Primary care refers to a pattern of medical practice in which a physician assumes responsibility for managing all of the routine medical problems of a group of patients on a long-term, continuous basis. Problem-based learning is a pedagogical approach in which a small group of students engage in self-directed learning aimed at reaching an understanding of the ways that the biological sciences and clinical disciplines can elucidate a specific scientific or clinical problem. A regional campus is a geographically separated campus that is under the central administrative or program governance of the medical school. In such a campus, a medical school offers a significant concentration of basic science, clinical clerkship, and/or residency training in a community at a distance from the main medical school campus. A selective is an elective course for which the options available to be selected are limited. Service learning is learning that occurs in settings (generally community-based settings) where services are being provided. Shelf examinations. (See: NBME subject examinations.) A standardized patient (SP) is an individual who has been trained to portray the history, physical findings, and affect of an actual patient in a standardized way on a repeating basis. SPs are used for both the teaching and the assessment of students. A subinternship is an advanced clinical elective in which senior medical students assume many of the responsibilities generally held by first-year residents. Summative assessment is the assessment of a student's performance primarily for the purpose of reaching a decision about the overall quality of that performance. Comprehensive examinations, end-of-clerkship, and “end-of-year” examinations are forms of summative assessment. (See also: Formative assessment.) Teaching portfolio refers to a collection of information about a faculty member's teaching activities that is generally used in making promotion and tenure decisions. Team-Based Learning (TBL) is a well-defined instructional strategy used in business and science courses. TBL brings together theoretically-based and empirically-grounded strategies for ensuring the effectiveness of small-groups working independently in classes with high student-faculty ratios (e.g., up to 200:1) without losing the benefits of faculty-led small groups with lower ratios (e.g., 7:1). The Match is the system that uses a computerized program to optimally match graduating medical students with residency programs to which they have applied and that are willing to accept them. (See also: NRMP.) Two + two (or 2 + 2) curriculum refers to the traditional organization of the medical school curricula, in which the first two years are devoted almost exclusively to basic science education and the last two years are devoted almost exclusively to clinical education. A tutorial is a pedagogical approach in which a tutor or facilitator guides a student's learning in individual or small-group sessions. Undergraduate medical education refers to the four years of education conducted by medical schools and that lead to the granting of the MD degree. (See also: Graduate medical education; Continuing medical education.) USMLE is the acronym for the United States Medical Licensing Examination, the three-part examination sequence that must be passed to gain a license to practice medicine in the United States. USMLE Steps 1, 2, and 3. The series of examinations that physicians must pass to be licensed in the United States. The three parts: Step 1, on the basic sciences at the end of the second year of medical school; Step 2, Clinical Skills (CS) and Clinical Knowledge (CK), on the clinical subjects at the end of the third year, beginning of the fourth year of medical school; and Step 3, which provides a final assessment, at the end of the internship, of physicians' assuming independent responsibility for delivering general medical care. (See also: NBME subject examinations.) Vertical integration of the curriculum is the integration of thematic or topic specific content across the years of the curriculum without regard for the organization of individual courses. (See also: Horizontal integration of the curriculum.)

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