Just a slogan or reality?
Our department has identified innovation as a core academic outcome of our work and is even included innovation in our accountability framework. Such a goal is admirable, but is there any reality to this aspiration? The linked sections from this page provide ample examples for an impressive effort. Yet it might be helpful to summarize the conditions that predict our department is well positioned to deliver innovation in medical education for some time to come.
- Necessity is the mother of invention. The basic driver to do things differently comes from the need to do so. Our department members work at the front line of all levels of medical education, including all 4 years of undergraduate medical school, one of the largest and most distributed residency programs in the country, accredited 3rd year extra skill programs and continuous professional learning. We directly live and experience the needs at all these levels of medical education.
- We bring a scholarly mind view to our busy clinical and educational work. We have an embedded department culture of assessment and measurement directed to both understanding opportunities for improvement and to measure the effectiveness of new interventions.
- We have created a team and infrastructure that removes the barriers to innovation and provides the capacity to move forward in innovative ways. This capacity can be seen in multiple ways. These range from faculty recruitment and retention strategies, physician payment methods, the recruitment of non-physician experts, the guidance from new governance arrangements, the support of cutting edge information technology, program funding capacity and many other department infrastructure capabilities.
Innovation in our department is here to stay.
