The Arizona Medical Association has awarded the 2019 C.H. William Ruhe Award for innovation and excellence in continuing medical education to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center for innovation in active learning by the faculty teaching medical students at Creighton University’s School of Medicine-Phoenix Regional Campus.
“The St. Joseph’s-Creighton program is an added faculty incentive to document the preparation and delivery of teaching medical students and residents,” said Charles Daschbach, MD, chair of ArMA’s accreditation committee. “It’s the first among Arizona teaching hospitals to do it.”
The program offers faculty CME credit for addressing their own learning needs in preparing to engage medical students through formal presentations, developing cases or clinical problems, supervising clinical or simulated activities, and teaching clinicals or other skills.
Specifically, the “personal learning projects” undertaken by faculty support the active learning that goes into preparing and presenting to medical students.
“This was a valuable opportunity to offer our faculty something in return for the uncompensated hours they spend developing educational programs for our trainees,” said Jason Caplan, MD, chair of psychiatry at St. Joseph’s and Creighton psychiatry professor, who initiated the project along with Randy Richardson, MD, associate dean of Creighton University’s School of Medicine-Phoenix Regional Campus, and Veronica Baez, coordinator of Continuing Medical Education (CME) at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.
The approach to awarding CME for improving the teaching method has been “one of our most effective tools for helping our faculty develop new teaching techniques,” noted Richardson.
“This program rewards our faculty for not just teaching the same material in the same way but for innovating and improving their teaching methods and content,” he said.
The award will be celebrated Saturday, June 1, at the 2019 Presidents Awards Dinner at the Gila River Wild Horse Pass Conference Center in Chandler.
