Students will have a chance to debate some of the hottest topics in undergraduate medical education at the AMA Medical Student Section (MSS) Annual Meeting, June 5-7 in Chicago. Some of these issues will make it to the AMA House of Delegates floor to be considered for adoption as AMA policy.
Student participants will discuss more than 40 different policy resolutions. Here are a few key issues:
- Restricting the sale of electronic cigarettes. One resolution up for debate calls for clinical research on the effects of e-cigarettes and advocates for prohibiting the sale of these devices to minors. It also supports educating parents and children about the effects of e-cigarettes, nicotine, tobacco and other addictive substances.
- Including preventative medicine in loan repayment program. Another resolution proposes including physicians trained in preventive medicine among those who qualify for the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) Loan Repayment Program, making the case that preventive medicine physicians have specific training in promoting the health of individuals and communities. Currently, the program employs physicians in family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology and geriatrics in community health centers and other approved sites.
- Promoting electronic health records (EHR) education. This resolution recommends encouraging medical schools to teach the proper use of EHRs and allowing medical students to access and use actual EHRs. Schools participating in the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative already are incorporating real patient data and EHRs into revamped curricula.
- Teaching more about the social determinants of health during undergraduate medical education. This resolution discusses the importance of understanding the social determinants of health to eventually reduce health disparities. It proposes supporting integration of health disparity issues into medical school curriculum, including strategies for recognizing and addressing the needs of patients from marginalized populations. It also proposes encouraging stakeholders to assess the adequacy of current curricula pertaining to this topic.
- Evaluating the USMLE Step 1 test. This resolution proposes evaluating the content and timing of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 1, which hasn’t been updated since 1994. The resolution explains the current momentum for standardized test reform—with the new MCAT in 2015 and the new SAT Reasoning Test in 2016—offers a good opportunity to review the USMLE Step 1 exam.
Additional student news from the AMA-MSS Annual Meeting and the 2014 AMA Annual Meeting will be posted in AMA Wire™ in the coming weeks.
