Establishing Regional Medical Campuses to Ensure Comparable Experiences: Recommendations From a Narrative Review

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title>Background:</jats:title><jats:p> Given increasing class sizes and desires to keep costs down, many medical schools are developing regional clinical campuses. We found our regional campus system to be very successful in allowing class size expansion, inspiring a workforce for the state, and concurrently allowing our students to individualize their experience. We desire to articulate our experience, with a review of the relevant evidence, with the goal of assisting other medical schools in their efforts to develop regional medical campuses. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods:</jats:title><jats:p> We conducted a narrative literature review to identify considerations for developing regional campuses, taking into consideration our experiences in the process. A medical librarian undertook a literature search for the purposes of this narrative review. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results:</jats:title><jats:p> Of the 61 articles identified, 14 were included for full-text review. Five facets on branch campus development were identified: relationships, infrastructure, curriculum, recruitment, and accreditation. Within each of these facets we provide further details based on findings from the literature complemented by our experience. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusions:</jats:title><jats:p> Launching a regional campus requires building relationships with clinical partners, ensuring an infrastructure that supports student need and accreditation, comparable curriculum with the same objectives and assessment measures, and aspects of the experience that inspire a student desire to learn in that setting. We share our experience in building successful branch campuses, which have added significantly to our large public school of medicine and its service to our state. </jats:p></jats:sec>

Conceptualizing Educational Comparability in Distributed Health Professions Education: A Scoping Review

“…4,5 The requirement creates a tension between striving to strengthen training in diverse contexts and delivering a standardized curriculum by reducing emphasis on the unique learning opportunities those contexts provide. 6 This tension may be the reason that comparability is one of the standards most commonly cited for noncompliance during accreditation. 4 In the United States, Canada, and Australia, the relevant standard requires that a "medical school ensures that the medical curriculum includes comparable educational experiences and equivalent methods of assessment across all locations within a given required learning experience to ensure that all medical students achieve the same learning objectives."…”

“…Many articles cite specific standards for medical schools with 1 or more geographically distributed campuses. 6,9,14,18,21,23,24,[28][29][30] In articles that did not specifically refer to accreditation, authors offered concerns about educational quality in decentralized training locations, about whether the heterogeneity of clinical experiences and practitioners from community hospitals can maintain the same teaching standards as expected in academic teaching hospitals, and ultimately, whether differences in learning experiences may impact learning outcomes. 15,16,20,26,27,31,33…”

“…Most articles reviewed indicated that having common learning goals and objectives is necessary for comparability. 6,9,23 The approaches used to establish and manage learning objectives and assessment were similar, with different aspects emphasized across different schools and articles. For example, many articles discussed the importance of adopting effective governance systems to enable centralized decision-making on key learning objectives and assessment approaches with full and mandatory participation from faculty leaders across all teaching campuses.…”

Access as equity: Addressing the distribution of the pediatric dermatology workforce

“…Several studies exploring physician recruitment to rural areas have found that a history of rural upbringing or exposure can positively influence future rural medical practice. [17][18][19][20][21][25][26][27] Early exposure to target communities was shown as a strong indicator for successful physician recruitment and retention. [17][18][19]25 This exposure can engender familiarity, an important factor in establishing confidence when navigating the medical and social demands of a community.…”

“…Exposure to rural communities via regional medical campuses or rotations during medical school has also been highly associated with future likelihood to practice in rural Pediatric Dermatology UGWU-DIKE anD naMBUDIRI locales. [17][18][19]25,27 Incorporation of rural training experiences directly into medical school, residency, and fellowship curricula can further augment exposure to such opportunities for all trainees.…”