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School of Medicine

Curricular Affairs

Clinical Faculty

Faculty Development

The WSUSOM has always recognized and appreciated the fact that the vast majority of the clinical knowledge imparted on our students come from clinical faculty and residents. The near peer contributions of resident teachers joined with the experienced guidance of clinicians along with community preceptors all combine to make for a great clinical education. This makes WSUSOM grads well prepared for entering the next phases of their training. The goal of WSU will always be the training of great clinicians, and this would not be possible without the several thousand residents and faculty leading the effort.

The clinical education of WSU students is spread out among a vast array of facilities—outpatient and inpatient—involving all the major health systems of southeast Michigan, multiple postgraduate programs, and diverse settings and experiences. Throughout this complex system, the SOM still sets the policies, procedures, and curriculum that unite this experience. Although the student experience at each site is never going to be the same, it is comparable for all students.

To continue to create a positive learning experience for our students and a rewarding teaching experience full of continued medical education for our educators, we have developed a set of faculty development tools for our residents and facutly. We hope these tools provide a great resource to our amazing clinical educators and act as a unifier between our clinical sites and the SOM.

Educational Tools

OLT Learning Library

Our Learning Library is a dynamic platform designed to empower clinician educators like you with cutting-edge knowledge and skills in medical education.

The Learning Library hosts a comprehensive collection of over 30 modules, enriched with Teaching Resources and a micro-video series. These modules are carefully curated to offer asynchronous learning experiences, allowing you the flexibility to enhance your expertise at your own pace and convenience.

Our primary objective with the Learning Library is to provide a robust foundation for faculty enrichment, serving as the initial phase of our broader faculty development plan. In the future, we aim to expand our offerings to include engaging synchronous sessions, further deepening your learning journey.

To explore the latest modules and stay updated on upcoming synchronous sessions and additions to the Learning Library, we invite you to keep an eye on the OLT website. 

Check out the Learning Library for our educational materials today. Use your Wayne State University Access ID (ab1234) and password to sign in.

Wayne Trained

As part of its Strategic Plan, Wayne State University School of Medicine (WSUSOM) is committed to developing Master Adaptive Learners ready to advance in the medical education continuum. This goal is anchored through the Warrior MD Houses and enhanced by a partnership between the Wayne Trained Initiative and a new longitudinal Coaching Program.

The Wayne Trained Initiative, introduced by Dr. Margit Chadwell and Dr. Christopher Steffes in 2024 at the Clinician Investiture Ceremony, aims to foster student interest in primary care, prepare students for clinical scenarios, and develop them into master adaptive learners. Under the guidance of Family Medicine physicians, many of whom are WSUSOM alumni, students engage in six clinical scenarios and learn key concepts in the clinical setting throughout the first two segments of their education.

In conjunction with the Wayne Trained Initiative, WSUSOM is launching a longitudinal coaching program. Following clinical sessions, students will gather in small groups with faculty coaches to discuss scenarios relevant to their stage in medical school. Topics covered will include professionalism, professional identity formation, the MSPE letter, and career goals. These small group sessions provide a platform for students to set goals and find solutions to common challenges. Additionally, clinical faculty will be available for one-on-one coaching sessions. Coaches, trained by WSUSOM experts Dr. Teena Chopra and Dr. Anthony Gaynier, bring certified training and extensive coaching experience.

The integration of Wayne Trained scenarios within the Warrior MD Houses creates a robust support system, ensuring a comprehensive and enriching experience for our students.

New Innovations and Evaluations 

We're always working to improve our evaluations so they are better tools for learning and growth for our students and easier for our evaluators to complete.

  • M3 Clerkships
    • As students progress through the core clerkships of M3, their instruction is guided by the goals and objects. There are a set of overall objectives that are common to all clerkships. Student achievement is assessed by successful demonstration and fulfillment of these objectives
    • Each clerkship has a separate evaluation to evaluate each student's skills relative to each specific clerkship. The M3 clerkships include: Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Neurology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Surgery.
    • Students can request these evaluations from faculty, coordinators can assign these to faculty on behalf of the student or faculty member, and faculty can assign these evaluations to themselves if they would like to evaluate a particular student 
  • M4 Emergency Medicine Core Clerkship
    • In the EM Core Clerkship, students become familiar with the initial evaluation and stabilization of patients who present to the emergency department with urgent and emergent medical illnesses and traumatic injuries. Students gain experience managing acutely ill and injured patients in a timely fashion. They follow the patient's emergency department course, and provide an appropriate disposition. Students become familiar with a variety of invasive and noninvasive techniques that are routinely used in the treatment of patients in the emergency department.
    • This evaluation form asks the preceptor to indicate the student's skills in commonly necessary medical fields. It also includes questions on professionalism and ethics and asks for comments for improvement. 
  • M4 Clinical Electives 
    • This evaluation form includes questions for all clinical electives. This evaluation includes familiar questions about student behavior, professionalism, medical knowledge, and patient care, without having to skip questions that are more closely related to non-clinical electives.
  • M4 Non-Clinical Electives
    • This evaluation form covers non-clinical electives, research electives, and online electives. Preceptors no longer have to scroll past clinical questions to get to relevant questions about non-clinical electibves. The SOM still expects comments on professionalism, goals, and assignemnts, but the rest is more specific to the type of elective the preceptor is evaluating. 
  • M4 Acting Internships (AIs)
    • Acting Internships are clerkships dedicated to promoting higher skills in patient care that includes greater autonomy and preparation for the first year of post-graduate training. The evaluation for AIs is different from every other evaluation structure in that it asks the students to be evaluated on six EPAs in addition to a narrative assessment. Read more about what's new in Acting Internships.

Using New Innovations

At the end of each rotation, preceptors evaluate students and students evaluate preceptors. Preceptors can view the evaluations they have given or received on New Innovations. All student evaluations of the preceptor are anonymously completed, so they may not be viewable depending on administrator configurations. While we encourage educators to frequently review their student evaluations of the preceptor to see how students are responding to their teaching style, WSUSOM delays viewing of all student evaluations of preceptors for 90 days following completion of the clerkship or elective. This is done to avoid conflict and concerns of reprisal on the part of the student and hopefully leads to honest, valuable feedback for both student and faculty/resident evaluators.

To access evaluations, preceptors need to log in to New Innovations using "Wayne State University School of Medicine - wayneume" as the institution. Then preceptors use their assigned Username and Password to complete the login. 

Once logged in, preceptors can view the evaluations they've completed and any evaluations completed about them. Follow these steps to view evaluations:

  1. Once logged in, go to Evaluations > Completed Evaluations > View Completed Evaluations
    • If you also work with GME learners, make sure to sign into wayneume to look for the student evaluations and click on the UME Medical School Evaluations tab.
  2. Select a Class Definition (specific class or year) or choose All
  3. Check the box in front of a completed evaluation and click View Selected UME evaluations
  4. Evaluations from students are always marked "Anonymous" as we expect faculty and residents will not know the identity of the student evaluators. 
  5. Print or export if you want:
    • You can use your browser to print: right-click on the page and select Print from the browser menu
    • Click Export to Excel to export the data to a spreadsheet format

For assistance with New Innovations, please contact records@med.wayne.edu

Critical Appraisal

Coming Soon!

Longitudinal Courses Explained

At the SOM, we believe longitudinal education can provide an important component to a cohesive and comprehensive medical education. That's why our students are automatically enrolled in longitudinal courses throughout their medical academic careers. 

Clinical Reasoning Integration of Skills & Practice (CRISP)

Our M3 longitudinal CRISP course is a yearlong course designed to advance skills in areas common to all specialties. As an integral part of the four-year Highways to Excellence clinical program, students are prepped in various ways to feel confident in completing the Shelf/STEP 2 Exam. Students have sessions on clinical reasoning, interprofessional health care, continuation of ultrasound curriculum in the clinical setting (including capturing and interpreting images), leadership, career planning, wellness and other topics that help unify the core curriculum. Students also gain experience reading EKGs and radiographs, palliative care, and working in teams.

Clinical Reasoning Using Integrated Skills in Education (CRUISE)

In this longitudinal course, senior students advance their skills in areas common to all specialties while applying clinical reasoning to online assignments, in-pereson workshops, and asynchronous content. With this, students are better prepared for graduation and everything that comes after. Students practice in areas such as professionalism, ethical and social responsibility, and critical thinking to enhance skills and knoweldge best introduced in the post-clerkship setting. 

Teaching and Learning in Medical Education (TLMed)

This course is designed to provide fourth-year students with the opportunity to cultivate their teaching skills in order to better prepare them for residency. This course provides all students with the fundamentals of learning theory and evidence-based teaching to help medical students become effective educators. Students will apply educational principles as they work with first, second, third, and/or fourth-year students. The course includes two virtual workshops and a series of modular assignments that support teaching session preparation and encourage reflective analysis of teaching methods. Students are required to complete a minimum of eight teaching sessions, including six in-person, at WSUSOM designated classes or clinical sessions.

How to Write the Best Letter of Recommendation (LOR) for Residencies

The WSU SOM greatly appreciates the thousands of letters written by our faculty. While we know many faculty members are seasoned experts in LOR writing, we have some new faculty who may not have written a LOR for a medical students before and other faculty who find a refresher course very helpful each year.

Check out our quick guide (5 minute read) to writing LORs: Suggestions for Writing a MEDICAL STUDENT Letter of Recommendation FOR RESIDENCY PROGRAMS.

Professionalism Report & PEARLS

Reward excellent and impressive students with a PEARLS nomination! Positive PEARLS submissions can help a student continue to thrive and get into their residency of choice. 

Report students struggling with unprofessional or inappropriate behavior with a Misconduct submission. These students will be taken to committee to address the behavior and find appropriate solutions for moving forward. 

Benefits to Joining Faculty

There are so many benefits to joining our clinical faculty. 

Shiffman Medical Library Resources

As a voluntary faculty member, physicians gain access to great resources at the Shiffman Medical Library like PubMed and UpToDate. These clinical information resources allow for better patient care, better teaching, and can be crucial to a physician's research and practice goals. 

Continuing Medical Education CME

Voluntary faculty physicians have the opportunity to claim Continuing Medical Education (CME) AMA PRA Category 2 credits for their instructional hours with our students.

CME Letters

Coming Soon!

Committees

Voluntary faculty members make an even greater difference to our School of Medicine and the education of our students by serving on countless committees. These committees offer our faculty the opportunity to share their expertise and influence decisions. Physicians can create sub-committees to explore and research topics of interest and further develop their knowledgebase.  

Resident and Faculty Handbook

We greatly appreciate the efforts of our faculty and residents to teach our students. This guide provides valuable information on our educational programs, expectations, evaluations, and more. We hope it proves useful and assists in answering the common question, "What are they doing at the Medical School?"

View the handbook

Also check out the Wayne State University School of Medicine Handbook and Policies.

Resident and Faculty Newsletter Archive - Sign Up for Our Newsletter!