Fostering the professional development of medical students

Abstract

Medical education in the 1990s faces many challenges as it prepares graduates to practice in a rapidly changing environment. Recognizing that biomedical knowledge and skills alone are not sufficient preparation for medical practice, the Medical College of Wisconsin has implemented a 2‐year curriculum explicitly designed to facilitate medical students’ development of their professional identities, with an emphasis on the ability to make reasoned judgments in the face of uncertainty. Grounded in student development theory, the Profession of Medicine Program (POMP) is structured to challenge medical students’ conceptions of the physicians’ roles, responsibilities, values, and competencies through a series of short didactic courses and small‐group preceptor meetings. Results of a 3‐year study designed to evaluate the impact of POMP on students’ assumptions about the nature of knowledge and of uncertainty in medicine indicate that POMP students score significantly higher on the Measure of Intellectual Development than do a nonequivalent control group of medical students.