Teaching hematology to second year medical students: results of a national survey of hematology course directors

Abstract

Increasing clinical productivity expectations at academic medical centers and new faculty effort reporting requirements for NIH-supported investigators challenge the tradition of faculty volunteerism for medical student teaching. To better define the structure, content, and financial support of second year medical school hematology courses nationwide, we mailed a survey to the hematology course directors at 85 of the 125 accredited US medical schools. The 58 course directors who returned the survey represent all regions of the US and both public and private medical schools. Median class size was 150 students (range 40-200), and some courses included a substantial proportion (up to 33%) of other types of students. The median number of hours per course was 33 h (range 8 to 74). Approximately 50% of the total teaching time was devoted to lecture (range 5 to 100%). Web-based teaching was used by 62% of course directors. The median number of faculty responsible for teaching the second year hematology course was 12 (range 1-36). The hematology course directors identified a number of obstacles, including difficulty in recruiting teachers, the lack of well-defined content, and the very modest budget (less than $1,500 for most courses). Only three of the course directors indicated that they received salary support for this role. These findings suggest that a national effort to define learning objectives for the hematology courses and to share teaching materials among medical schools is warranted. Little financial support is provided for the hematology course, and these findings compel the identification of resources to pay faculty for teaching medical student required courses.