Medical Education Program Objectives
The following competency-based Medical Education Program Objectives (MEPOs) guide the delivery, strategy, and evaluation of Alice L. Walton School of Medicine’s (AWSOM) medical degree program. The ARCHES curriculum organizes the instruction and assessment of medical students using the MEPOs listed below. AWSOM’s MEPOs are annually reviewed and revised by the Curriculum Committee.
Patient Care and Procedural Skills
Students must demonstrate compassionate, effective, evidence-informed, and equitable patient-centered care.
1. Gathers relevant patient histories from multiple data sources as necessary.
2. Performs relevant physical examinations using appropriate techniques and tools.
3. Identifies patients in need of urgent or emergent clinical care, seeks assistance, and recommends initial evaluation and management.
4. Creates and prioritizes differential diagnoses.
5. Proposes hypothesis-driven diagnostic testing and interprets results.
6. Develops a patient-centered management plan using evidence-based information while integrating patient lived experiences, values, preferences, and goals.
7. Demonstrates basic procedural techniques.
Medical Knowledge
Students must apply and integrate foundational, clinical, and social sciences knowledge to improve health care for patients and populations.
1. Incorporates knowledge of basic science principles, psychosocial, social, and health system science, as well as humanities, needed for clinical practice.
2. Applies foundational knowledge for clinical problem-solving, diagnostic reasoning, and decision-making to clinical scenarios.
3. Demonstrates knowledge of research design, interpretation, and application to clinical questions.
Practice-Based Learning and Improvement
Students must integrate feedback, evidence, and reflection to adapt behavior, foster improvement, and cultivate lifelong learning.
1. Identifies opportunities for growth in one's own performance through feedback, self-assessment, and reflective practice.
2. Locates, critically appraises, and synthesizes information to support evidence-informed, patient-centered clinical decisions.
Interpersonal and Communication Skills
Students must effectively communicate and interact with patients, caregivers, and the health care team to contribute to high-quality patient-centered care.
1. Collaborates with patients, caregivers, and team members to enhance the therapeutic relationship.
2. Communicates clearly, accurately, and compassionately in verbal, nonverbal, written, and electronic formats.
3. Demonstrates skills in educating patients, caregivers, peers, and team members.
Professionalism
Students must demonstrate integrity, respect, and ethical reasoning and promote inclusion in all interactions to improve health care for patients, communities, and populations.
1. Demonstrates respect and compassion for patients, caregivers, families, and team members.
2. Safeguards patient privacy, and confidentiality.
3. Demonstrates integrity and ethical reasoning to guide behavior in decision-making and accountability of actions
4. Completes duties and tasks in a thorough, reliable, and timely manner.
5. Recognizes personal well-being, self-awareness, and professional sustainability as integral to ethical practice and clinical performance.
Systems-Based Practice
Students must apply knowledge of the larger context of health, including its social and structural determinants, and of systems and resources within and outside of health care to optimize patient, community, and population health.
1. Recognizes social structures and drivers that influence healthcare delivery and health outcomes.
2. Contributes to healthy teams, learning environments, and systems by promoting dignity, and psychological safety for health and well-being.
3. Identifies patient safety concerns and systems issues to optimize patient-centered care.
4. Applies knowledge of local populations and community health needs, disparities, and resources.
Technology
Students must apply technological advancements to enhance clinical decision-making and patient care, with an emphasis on using emerging technologies and data analysis tools to deliver personalized patient care and enhance patient outcomes.
1. Applies knowledge relevant to clinical problems using appropriate resources, including emerging technologies, to enhance clinical decision-making.
2. Demonstrates competence in employing technologies to access and analyze data to apply comprehensive patient-centered care.
Whole Health Practice
Students must apply a whole health operating philosophy that integrates individual, relational, cultural and systems-level factors to support healing, agency, and human flourishing for patients, professionals, and communities.
1. Evaluates and integrates conventional, complementary, and integrative strategies using a safety-focused, evidence-informed framework to support whole-person health across body, mind, meaning, and community.
2. Uses engagement with the arts and humanities to enhance observational capacity, narrative understanding, and interpretation of lived illness experience within a whole health framework.