CLASS PARENTS AND PARTNERS – AN INSIDER’S VIEW OF MEDICAL EDUCATION AT PENN Penn Medicine’s Standardized Patient Program trains people to portray various patient scenarios to help students learn to handle the emotionally challenging aspects of medical care. At the Parents and Partners demonstration, fourth-year student Austin Kilaru informed an actress playing a former intravenous drug user that she was HIV-positive. Ira Dosovitz, M.D. ’74, whose son Simon Dosovitz is now a first-year student, was originally skeptical. “I appreciated the
Gail Morrison addressed parents in her talk, “From a Caterpillar to a Butterfly: The Transformation of Medical Students Year by Year.”
Medical school is incredibly taxing: emotionally, physically, and intellectually. Hosted by Alumni Development and Alumni Relations, the Parents and Partners program offers families a morning-long program designed specifically to introduce them to the medical-school experience. The program has become very popular, attracting more than 600 participants this year. Parents and Partners focuses on the School’s role as a leader in innovative medical education and on the tremendous support system the administration has created for its students. “Our educational approach to understanding medicine is that we treat the whole patient, and because of this, our innovative, humanistic curriculum teaches to the whole student,” said Senior Vice Dean Gail Morrison, M.D. ’71, G.M.E. ’76, during her welcoming remarks. Two sessions focused on strategies now integrated into Penn Medicine’s curriculum: clinical simulation and standardized patients. No longer relying on the “see one, do one, teach one” approach, the new frontier of medical education provides safe, controlled environments where medical situations are simulated so students can practice procedures over and over with no real consequences. Parents and Partners guests observed, and some participated in, a hands-on simulation of heart resuscitation using the Sim Man mannequin.
Sim Man Session, led by Gregg Lipschik, M.D., Director of Life Support Training and Special Programs at Penn Medicine’s Clinical Simulation Center.
education I received on standardized patients while attending Parents and Partners. It helped me recognize its benefits.” “We didn’t have a White Coat Ceremony or anything like Parents and Partners when I was at Penn,” said Dr. Dosovitz. “The entire day was very stimulating and helpful for parents of new medical students, but it was also warm and inviting. One of the greatest aspects of Penn Medicine is that it is a first-rate school as well as an accessible, tight-knit community.” In the “My Child, the Doctor: Will I Survive It” Panel, families learned from experienced parents and current medical students about what Simon Dosovitz and his father, Dr. Ira Dosovitz
2012/FALL ■ 37