School of Medicine
Curriculum
Competencies for Medical Education
As an educational community, the University of Massachusetts Medical School strives to produce graduates who will become caring healers both by assuring that they possess the requisite knowledge and skills and by strengthening their natural talents and desire to care for others.
The multiple roles of the physician as healer, and the associated competencies that graduating medical students must demonstrate, form the basis for a new way of organizing what is taught, how it is taught and the methods for evaluating student performance at UMMS. They embody the Medical School's educational philosophy and the distinctive attributes of its faculty and students. These six roles, which form the cornerstone for a redefining of the Medical School's educational objectives, are Physician as …
Professional
,
Scientist
,
Communicator
,
Clinical Problem Solver
,
Patient and Community Advocate
and
Person
. Click here to see the full text of the UMass Medical School
Competencies for Medical Education
, adopted by the Educational Policy Committee in May 2003.
In a competency-based curriculum, outcomes are defined in terms of how students are able to apply knowledge and skills in situations mimicking the real tasks physicians perform. Student fulfillment of these competencies will be assessed by new and previously used measures including: faculty and resident observations in both pre-clinical and clinical settings; exams and assignments; patient write-ups; and Objective Structured Clinical Examinations.