Friday Courses

Modality: In person

Class size: 22

Goal: This course aims to provide information about the impact of different opportunities that medical professionals, including medical students, can pursue, and assess their impact.

Learning Objectives: Many students are motivated to pursue a career in medicine out of a sense of altruism, but on some analyses, the marginal societal impact of the average physician is surprisingly modest. At the same time, survey responses from medical students indicate uncertainty about which areas afford greater than average opportunities to do good. By the end of this course, students will have learned about high impact cause areas from a series of guest lecturer experts in global health, biosecurity, medical technology, research, and health policy, with a focus on evidence of impact and opportunities for early career medical students and physicians. Students will also learn how to identify other higher impact opportunities to leverage their medical training, skills, and even their careers, to maximize their impact. 

Format: lectures (including guest lecturers), discussion, flipped learning

Assignments: 30 minutes/week of articles, podcasts, and/or videos. Participation & written or recorded reflection in which students address how they will apply the methods taught in the course in their own careers, or evaluate the expected impact of contributing to a medical cause area of their choosing. 

Instructors: Benjamin Krohmal, JD

Modality: Virtual

Class size: 10

Goal: The American Civil War was a landmark event in our nation’s history. Binding up the wounds of a divided nation forever changed the medical profession and led to advances in many areas that have relevance even today. This course will introduce students to the central themes of Civil War-era medicine: surgery, infectious disease, mental health, nursing, and the organization of medical institutions. We will critically examine the complex relationship between medicine and the war and discover lessons for modern-day physicians.

Learning Objectives:  1) Compare mortality rates of traumatic injuries during the Civil War with mortality rates on today’s battlefields. 2) Outline the contributions of vaccines to disease control and public health from the Civil War to the present day. 3) Identify similarities in mass-casualty triage between the Civil War and today’s armed conflicts and natural disasters. 4) Evaluate potential interventions to reduce the occurrence of psychiatric illness in future armed conflicts.

Format: Lectures, discussions, viewing online videos and historical artifact collections

Assignments: Weekly reading assignments and oral presentation, participation and a final blog post on topic of their choice

Instructor: Kenny Lin, MD

Modality: In-person

Class size: 14

Goal: We will examine the manifestations of implicit bias in health care. The experiential learning focus of this course is for students to answer the rhetorical question, What Do You Do, as practicing physicians faced with the myriad examples of bias and discrimination that we will encounter in course readings. The emphasis is on HOW students would use the course materials to achieve desired results for their patients and if applicable, HOW they would act differently than the health care professionals and patients who lived the course readings.

Learning Objectives: Equity of care, cultural competence, implicit bias, diversity, population health, and their connection to federal law, medical malpractice, and informed consent liability can be among the most challenging of myriad legal mandates for health care providers.  Long described as just “doing the right thing,” culturally competent health care is now a legal imperative, with significant implications for physicians and health care providers’ practices, livelihoods, and the health of their patients. Academic studies demonstrate that culturally competent, civil rights compliant care reduces costs while also driving new business, attracting new customers, increasing workplace productivity, improving patient outcomes, and heightening medical staff satisfaction. We will discuss how to identify such bias and how to minimize its influence on vital health care and professional decision making. We will analyze federal health care civil rights laws and apply them to real life health care situations.

Format: Interactive class discussions. I encourage respectful, significant, and lively class discussion and participation as future physicians within the parameters of the What Do You Do orientation of this course. 

Assignments: Completion of weekly readings averaging 30-35 minutes per week, weekly attendance and class participation, In-class presentation or well-reasoned, well-written final project.

Instructor: Bruce L. Adelson, Esq.

Modality: In-person. NOTE: The course is best suited for those with intermediate level of Spanish language proficiency.

Class size: 13

Goal: To increase the language proficiency and cultural awareness empowering medical students to better serve their monolingual Spanish-speaking patients.

Learning Objectives: 1) Improve Spanish pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and comprehension and medical Spanish vocabulary. 2) Better understand the particularities of relevant health issues affecting the Latino population of the US. 3) Develop a better understanding of the specific socio-cultural beliefs, traditional medicine and practices among Spanish-speaking populations.

Format: Short lectures, role-play, conversations with Hispanic immigrants and evidence-based discussions on health issues affecting the Hispanic population.

Assignments: Attendance and participation, oral presentation on a specific health disparity topic and written exam. 

Instructor: Olga C. Rodriguez, MD, PhD

Modality: Hybrid (some sessions in person and some virtual)

Class size: 14

Goal: Students will be able to focus on their personal health--physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, occupationally, spiritually and financially.  Students will select one personal health behavior that they intend to improve during the selective. 

Learning Objectives: 1. Increase your awareness of strategies for improving personal health and well-being. 2. Improve your overall sense of health and wellbeing and one personal health behavior. 3. Report on the effect of group support and accountability on your health improvement efforts. 4. Report increased comfort with sharing personal health information with classmates and instructors. 5. Increase your level of empathy for patients’ efforts to change health behaviors. 6. Reflect in writing on the process of improving personal health and well-being.  

Format: Each session will feature a different aspect of wellbeing and an activity to practice the featured aspect. Discussions, demonstrations, guest speakers, student presentations and small-group activities, including meditation and yoga, are designed to support their personal health improvement projects. 

Assignments: Readings, videos, podcasts, written reflections, 30 minutes/week. Complete a final written paper, actively participate in each session.

Instructors: Kathryn Hart, MD & Kristin Paterson, PharmD

Modality: In-person

Class size: 13

Goal: To teach students compassionate communication skills using active listening skills, patient-centered communication and non-verbal skills in clinical settings. 

Learning Objectives: Students will learn to evaluate their communication skills and those of others with compassion in mind. Students will learn and practice active listening, patient-centered communication, communicating bad news and responding to negative emotions, both those of the patient and of the physician. Students will consider the importance of self-care and balance in the ongoing compassionate practice of medicine. Class will include topics such as chronic pain, mental illness, life-limiting genetic syndromes and discussions of grief and loss. Class will also include discussions of self-care strategies for physicians. 

Format: Course will include lectures, discussion, small group activity and role-play.

Assignments: Weekly readings and reflections estimated at 35 minutes per week with final project. Students are expected to be present and to participate in discussions consistently and to complete an insightful written presentation of self-care strategies.

Instructors: Maura Carroll, MD & Colleen Blanchfield, MD

Modality: Virtual

Class size: 14

Goal: The primary purpose of this course is to encourage critical thought and to engage in dialogue about structural injustice and how it affects our patients. 

Learning Objectives: 1) Understanding the Essential Factors for Physicians to Consider in the Quest for Health:  Political Economy and Structural Causalities of Suffering. 2) Learning The ABC’s of political economy and how it fits in with medicine. 3) Understanding Structural Forces:  Globalization, Trade Relations, the rise of Multi-National Corporations, and Media Bias. 4) Understanding the role of race in our society, review of the school to prison pipeline, the prison industrial complex and structural violence. 5) Understanding what Organizing and movement building looks like in medicine and the physician's role in structural change. 

Format: Primarily discussion based, some lectures, multi-media presentation, simulations

Assignments: Most assignments will be readings and thinking of responses for class discussions. The final project will be an oral presentation and a brief written component. Final project preparation may add about an hour in the final week. Students will be assessed by 1) attendance; 2) participation in discussion; 3) final project.

Instructor: Nima C  Sheth, MD, MPH & Cory Mitchell, D.Be, MA, MBA