A National Study on Training Innovation in US Medical Education

Introduction Traditional medical education has leaned heavily on memorization, pattern recognition, and learned algorithmic thinking. Increasingly, however, creativity and innovation are becoming recognized as a valuable component of medical education. In this national survey of Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) member institutions, we seek to examine the current landscape of exposure to innovation-related training within the formal academic setting. Methods Surveys were distributed to 168 of 171 AAMC-member institutions (the remaining three were excluded from the study for lack of publicly available contact information). Questions assessed exposure for medical students among four defined innovation pillars as follows: (1) medical humanities, (2) design thinking, (3) entrepreneurship, or (4) technology transfer. Chi-squared analysis was used to assess statistical significance between schools, comparing schools ranked in the top 20 by the US News and World Report against non-top 20 respondents, and comparing schools that serve as National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program hubs against non-CTSA schools. Heat maps for geospatial visualization of data were created using ArcGIS (ArcMAP 10.6) software (Redlands, CA: Environmental Systems Research Institute). Results The overall response rate was 94.2% with 161 schools responding. Among respondents, 101 (63%) reported having medical humanities curricula at their institution. Design thinking offerings were noted at 51/161 (32%) institutions. Support for entrepreneurship was observed at 51/161 institutions (32%), and technology transfer infrastructure was confirmed at 42/161 (26%) of institutions. No statistically significant difference was found between top 20 schools and lower 141 schools when comparing schools with no innovation programs or one or more innovation programs (p=0.592), or all four innovation programs (p=0.108). CTSA programs, however, did show a statistically significant difference (p<0.00001) when comparing schools with no innovation programs vs. one or more programs, but not when comparing to schools with all four innovation programs (p=0.639). Conclusion This study demonstrated an overwhelming prevalence of innovation programs in today's AAMC medical schools, with over 75% of surveyed institutions offering at least one innovation program. No statistically significant trend was seen in the presence of zero programs, one or more, or all four programs between top 20 programs and the remaining 141. CTSA hub schools, however, were significantly more likely to have at least one program vs. none compared to non-CTSA hub schools. Future studies would be valuable to assess the long-term impact of this trend on medical student education.