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Part of the Process

Amy Chan (left), Dieu Thi Nguyen, and Saila Moni (right) design a poster to educate resident physicians about heart failure.

Health care reform is my problem," wrote one fourth-year medical student in a final essay for the DMS course Health, Society, and the Physician (HSP). "As a physician it is my obligation to play a leadership role in healing American healthcare," the student continued. That's just the message that the directors of the course hoped DMS medical students would take with them as they begin their careers as physicians.

Beginning in 1983, HSP was the first DMS course to tackle subjects such as domestic violence, HIV, managed care, and health policy. Now, it is the first course at DMS—and probably in the entire country—to require all medical students to work on the frontlines of a health-care delivery improvement project.

For more about the course and health-care delivery science, read "Part of the Process" in the Summer 2011 issue of Dartmouth Medicine and "Delivering the Goods" in the Fall 2010 issue. To watch one of the small-group student presentations from this year's HSP course, click on the video below. To read more about the students featured in the opening photo of "Part of the Process", scroll down and click on the photo link.

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• Improving patient flow and safety in DHMC's Cardiovascular Critical Care Unit
  The students in this small group were Isida Byku, Joseph Camacho, Suparna Chandra, Nicolas Ellis, Chetan Huded, Abiodun Kukoyi, Candice Li, Emily Perdoncin, and Hanghang Wang. The group was facilitated by Dr. Jon Lurie, the director of clinical trials at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI); Melanie Mastanduno (TDI), the director of population health measurement; and Karen Chandler, a nurse manager in the DHMC Cardiovascular Critical Care Unit.

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• Who are they and where are they going?