Promoting innovation: Enhancing transdisciplinary opportunities for medical and engineering students

Abstract

Purpose: Addressing current healthcare challenges requires innovation and collaboration. Current literature provides limited guidance in promoting these skills in medical school. One approach involves transdisciplinary training in which students from different disciplines work together toward a shared goal. We assessed the need for such a curriculum at Dartmouth College.

Methods: We surveyed medical and engineering students’ educational values; learning experiences; professional goals; and interest in transdisciplinary education and innovation. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Results: Shared values among student groups included leadership development, innovation, collaboration, and resource sharing. Medical students felt their curriculum inadequately addressed creativity and innovation relative to their engineering counterparts (p < 0.05). Medical students felt less prepared for entrepreneurial activities (p < 0.05), while engineering students indicated a need for basic medical knowledge and patient-oriented design factors. Despite strong interest, collaboration was less than 50% of indicated interest.

Conclusions: Medical and engineering students share an interest in the innovation process and need a shared curriculum to facilitate collaboration. A transdisciplinary course that familiarizes students with this process has the potential to promote physicians and engineers as leaders and innovators who can effectively work across industry lines. A transdisciplinary course was piloted in Spring 2017.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge James L. Adams, MSLIS, Dartmouth College Library, who provided data visualizations for the figures, and Gregory S. Ogrinc, MD, MS, Geisel School of Medicine, for his editorial support during the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Glossary

Transdisciplinary Education: An approach to learning that transcends boundaries between and beyond traditional disciplines, and opens the opportunity for knowledge and perspectives from different scientific disciplines to be integrated. Participants share goals and skills in a way that promotes creativity, innovative thinking, and problem solving.

Adapted from:

Lotrecchiano GR. 2013. The science-of-team-science, transdisciplinary capacity, and shifting paradigms for translational professionals. J Transl Med Epidemiol. 1.

Pennington DD, et al. 2013. Transdisciplinary research, transformative learning, and transformative science. Bioscience. 63(7):564–573.

Notes on contributors

Tiffany Brazile, BA, BS, is a fourth-year medical student and medical education scholar at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Her scholarly interests include curriculum innovation and self-directed learning.

Glenda Hostetter Shoop, Ph.D., M.Ed., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Education at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and Director of Central Academic and Learning Support Services and Operations. Her scholarly interests include the relationship between cognition and metacognition.

Christine M. McDonough, PT, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and in Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh. Her interests focus on clinical and health services in orthopaedics and geriatrics and the development and testing of patient-centered health outcome measures.

Douglas W. Van Citters, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. His areas of expertise span the field of orthopedic research, including biomaterials and biomechanics, with particular interests in the design process as it applies to medical devices and human interaction.