PRIME Project

The Romanell Workshops and National Symposium on New Innovations in

Medical Ethics, Humanism, and Professionalism

Summary

The Project to Rebalance and Integrate Medical Education (PRIME) will bring together bioethics and humanism educators to catalyze the continued evolution of ethics, humanism, and professionalism education in the United States at the client level of medical schools and residency programs by innovating new “benchmark” standards to medical education. PRIME will promote transformational change in integrating medical ethics, humanism, and professionalism throughout medical school and residency to a more coherent and elevated standard.

Method

PRIME will create a renewed focus on medical education in ethics, humanism, and professionalism by bringing together those educators and scholars who are best positioned in their knowledge and influence to bring new innovations to the endeavor of ethics and professionalism education. The workshops will serve as a means to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current bioethics and humanistic education in medicine via a series of “state of the art” papers of current educational efforts in bioethics and professionalism, with attention then turned toward prospective future efforts in the next 25 years. The symposium to follow will then be intended to disseminate these scholarly activities, and prepare for the peer-reviewed efforts to follow. The PRIME Investigators will formulate an aspirational vision for ethics, humanism, and professionalism teaching in pre-medical, medical school, and residency education for the next quarter century.

Workshop I — Workshop on the State of the Art in Ethics and Professionalism Education

• The first workshop (PRIME Workshop I: State of the Art) would invite 8-12 change agents with track records of both experience and publication in bioethics education for a two-day retreat to identify and discuss the spectrum of current models in medical education in ethics, with an emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. PRIME will commission four to six papers to be presented at this workshop that seek to identify current state of the art in medical school and residency teaching. This first symposium will then have both large group meetings and three sub-groups which will meet in small discussions to explore possible new initiatives in pre-clinical and clinical medical school education, as well as post-graduate education. The end-point for this first symposium is to then commission papers from each participant (and other non-attendees) for the second symposium to be held 12 months later. A summation of the first Romanell Workshop will be submitted to a peer-reviewed publication to highlight the current state of the art of medical educations and ethics, humanism, and professionalism, with an emphasis on directing collective energies for the future evolution of these efforts and garnering feedback to the workshop’s conclusions.

Workshop II — Workshop on Future Innovations

• This second symposium (PRIME Workshop II: Future Works) is intended to promote the future of bioethics education, by exploring the means, methods, and opportunities in ethics education in the next 25 years with 8-12 invited scholars with cutting edge work on bioethics education. PRIME will commission four to six papers to be presented at this workshop that seek to identify potential avenues of innovation in medical education. An overview article to summarize the major findings of these efforts will be published in a prominent medical education journal.

• A seminal article to distill the main points of the second conference will then be submitted as a peer-reviewed article. An online website with virtual conversations and streaming media in bioethics education will be constructed to allow for future activities of collaboration by participating scholars. The intention is to create linkages at major organizations and centers that have been separated by institutional affiliation in the past (e.g., AMA, ASBH, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature at Georgetown University, etc.) Based on the findings and feedback from Workshop I, Workshop II will looks at evolutionary changes foreseen and anticipated, as well as future innovations that currently are not considered mainstream. Selection of speakers will be made as in Workshop I. A panel on project progress is anticipated to be submitted for presentation at the National American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Conference.

• This two day national conference will draw on the themes presented in the two Romanell Workshops, by addressing past successes and shortcomings in ethics and humanism education, with proposals for solutions. The faculty for the Symposium will be drawn from the participants of the workshops, as well as newly identified persons, and will expand on the theme of new concepts in “state of the art” education, followed by proposals for the evolution of education. With each plenary paper theme, there will be discussion groups to discuss pragmatic considerations to undertake the proposed changes. The faculty will also have panel-based interactive sessions to allow for whole-group discussion and feedback. The commissioned papers will be cross-reviewed between participants at the two workshops and conference, then blind peer-reviewed after its conclusion for preparation of a major textbook in ethics and professionalism education.

• The intended audience of this conference will be educators from medical schools, and residency and fellowship programs, administrators from those environments, as well as representatives from the ACGME, LCME, and from professional organizations such as the ASBH, the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics (ASLME), and American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), and the AMA.