The Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education Announces the First Cohort of Medical Education Transformation Collaboratories

The Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education at the Medical College of Wisconsin is proud to announce the first cohort of Medical Education Transformation Collaboratories. These seven groups represent cross-institutional, multi- and inter-disciplinary, multiple stakeholder collaborative groups that proposed an audacious project to transform medical education. These groups emulate the Kern Institute’s shared values of caring and character by engaging in both innovation and scholarship. Together, these groups will build a community of practice for medical education transformation through the collective vision of the Kern Institute, the Kern National Network, and the Kern Family Foundation.

The funded collaboratories are as follows:

1. Laying a Strong Foundation: How Do Medical Schools with and without Learning Communities Promote Character, Caring and Professional Identity Formation During Students' Pre-Clerkship Years? This team will develop a greater understanding of the phenomenon of Professional Identity Formation (PIF) as experienced by medical students early in their medical education by studying both students and the role that organizational frameworks play in promoting PIF.
2. The Data Science of Character will establish a multifaceted, multi-level definition of character, a corresponding collection of behavioral measures of character, and draft a set of recommendations for cultivating character at the individual and institutional level.
3. Educating Educators to Serve as Change Agents through Professional Identify Formation will create, implement, and evaluate a new longitudinal curriculum for interprofessional healthcare leaders based on five content areas associated with higher-order professional development and education leadership among faculty participants.
4. NYU-UCSF Collaboratory to Advance underrepresented in medicine Faculty in Academic Medicine will examine the impact and outcomes of a Faculty Leadership Development Program designed for junior faculty who are underrepresented in medicine developed using a novel theory-based framework.
5. Characterizing Cultures of Mattering in Health Care Education will “learn how nursing and medical students matter, defined as adding value and feeling valued, in their learning environments.”
6. Creating a Collaboratory to Map Medical Education's Blind Spots will help the medical education community see its blind spots with clarity, identify structures and barriers that prevent progress and define strategies to address blind spots.
7. A Model for Integration of Clinical Performance Measures into Residency Training Programs (Policy Paper) will address policy related to the challenges of linking educational innovations with clinical outcome measures through the use of meaningful clinical performance measures, harnessing the potential of the electronic health records to capture these data, as well as bridging the silos of medical education and health care quality improvement.

Dr. Adina Kalet, Director of the Kern Institute states, "With caring and character at the forefront, our Collaboratories program establishes the Kern Institute as a leading funder of transformative medical education research. We are so excited to find dedicated partners at top medical schools around the country and abroad who share our vision and the vision of the Kern Family Foundation. Through our work together, we will integrate character and caring into the education of our students at the Medical College of Wisconsin, our collaboratory partner schools, and medical schools around the world."

Each of the funded collaboratories were selected after a competitive merit review process. This group includes 45 individuals from an array of academic disciplines. Overall, 22 health professional education institutions are represented as part of the collaboratories, including medical and nursing schools in many regions of the United States and Canada. Members of these seven collaboratories will meet together regularly in subsets throughout the year to share progress and resources, address challenges, plan for knowledge dissemination and learn together.