Can you believe it’s December and we’re about to end another calendar year? More so, the month of May is right around the corner, when we will graduate our fourth class, the Class of 2016.
This class has distinguished itself with its Step 2, Clinical Knowledge performance on the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) with a 99 percent pass rate and a mean score of 250 – 10 points above the national average. This group also has a 100 percent pass rate on the Step 2, Clinical Skills exam. Each student in the class is busy interviewing for residency positions throughout Florida and the United States at this time. In March, they will learn where they will spend the next few years of their lives.
The current third-year class has done well with the USMLE, Step 1 exam in its own right. They achieved a 100 percent pass rate with a mean score of 238 – 9 points above the national average. Our scores on each of the exam’s 24 content areas were 0.2 to 0.6 above the national mean. Thank you for preparing our students so well.
Many of you are also involved in interviewing the over 5,000 applicants (5,078 to be exact) for the 120 positions in the Class of 2020 which matriculates next August, and we really appreciate your efforts in that regard. With this new class, our M.D. program will be at full enrollment of 480 students.
Program Review and LCME accreditation are buzz words around the college these days. In January, five consultants will spend three days with university and college leadership, faculty, staff and students gathering information about our seven academic programs training a total of 3,421 learners – M.D., Ph.D., M.S. in Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology, and B.S. degrees in Biomedical Sciences, Biotechnology and Medical Laboratory Science. This number doesn’t include the 34 residents currently in our Internal Medicine Residency program, and which will increase in subsequent years.
After the Program Review ends, we will begin the LCME accreditation process. This entails developing the Data Collection Instrument (new term for database), and conducting a self-study culminating with a site-team visit in October 2017. All of this information will be reviewed by the LCME committee at its February 2018 meeting. The process has changed somewhat since we last went through accreditation as the 134 standards have been condensed to only 12 standards with several elements in each. All toll, about 90+ of the original standards have been kept and reformatted accordingly.
In late October, the college held its 5th Annual Faculty and Student Awards program. Thirty-three faculty were recognized for their contributions to the educational program – through modules, preceptorships, clerkships. Honorees include Drs. Acevedo-Segui, Ayesu, Backstrom, Barr, Beg, Borgon, Carr, Chaudary, Coffee, Colon, Crider, Dean, El-Said, Golden, Gonzalez, Jewett, M., Khaled, Kibble, Kotick, Miller, G., Miner, Monroe, Moran-Bano, Quigley, Rosendo, Sanchez, Savona, Sparks, Tesar, and Topping and Ms. Dexter.
Drs. Jaime Carrizosa and Ken Goldberg received the Richard B. Hornick Faculty Award for their outstanding dedication and commitment to the educational program. Congratulations to these faculty and thanks to all for your efforts in the educational program. You really do make a difference.
Congratulations also to Drs. Ayesu, Baidas, Brennan, Cassidy, Giodana, Kalidindi, Madruga, Okuda, Phillips, Sensakovic and Solomon who will be promoted in rank effective January 1. UCF has allowed the College to modify its previous promotion process. First, candidates will be reviewed at the college level only. The Dean will make promotion decisions based upon the recommendation of the College Non-Tenure Promotion Committee which reviews each candidate’s CV and three letters of recommendation. Second, the process will occur twice per year instead of once. Documentation for consideration needs to be submitted by December 31 and June 30 to the College of Medicine’s Office for Faculty and Academic Affairs. Promotion will be effective July 1 and January 1 based on these timelines for dossier submission. We are pleased with these changes that allow the college to recognize faculty who meet the criteria for all they do in our educational programs.
I’d like to invite all of our faculty to consider a special opportunity to participate in a nationally acclaimed shared-decision making workshop. The Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) has enthusiastically encouraged the college to support this special one- day workshop. With a focus on patient-centered care and effective communication techniques, the skills our faculty will develop through the workshop have the potential of transforming our clinical and learning environments. If you are interested in participating, please contact andrea.berry@ucf.edu and keep an eye out for more information in your inboxes in 2016.
I want to express my sincere thanks to the 36 affiliated institutions across Central Florida that are instrumental in providing outstanding venues for training our medical students – in core clerkships, selectives, electives and preceptorships.
Most importantly, I want to thank each and every one of you – the 2,252 faculty – who devote your efforts so our students learn the clinical knowledge and the art of medicine to become the outstanding physicians we aspire them to be. THANK YOU!
I wish each of you and your family a joyous, healthy and safe holiday season as 2015 draws to a close and we raise the curtain on another calendar year.
