Update on the Pritzker Initiative
Halina Brukner, Co-Chair
Marsha Rosner, Co-Chair
Since the October 19, 2005 kickoff, the Pritzker Initiative Steering Committee has been actively working to identify the core intellectual domains and critical principles by which the Pritzker curriculum is to be based. “It has been exhilarating to witness the enthusiasm and engagement of the faculty and students in the process so far,” commented Dr. Halina Brukner, Co-Chair of the Pritkzer Initiative along with Dr. Marsha Rosner. At present, the 89-member Task Force have been broken up into six working groups focusing on key domains.
Members of these working groups come from all reaches of the Biological Sciences Division and every academic level—from basic scientists to clinicians, assistant professors to full professors, faculty and department chairs. The eleven elected student members of the curriculum committees are also on the committee. Each committee is working on defining content, competencies, curricular organization, teaching methods, and assessment for each of these six key domains (see sidebar). Working concurrently across all six key domains are three committees focusing on topics that span all the key domains: (1) information technology; (2) evaluation methods; and (3) professionalism.
“The Pritzker Initiative has the goal of enhancing our current, successful curriculum by rethinking how we can best prepare our students for the challenges of medicine and science in the 21st century,” says Dr. Brukner. “In the first phase, we are attempting to define the intellectual domains that define 21st century medicine, and in the subsequent implementation planning phase, we will translate those insights into a coherent curricular structure that takes advantage of the integration of basic and clinical science in ways that reflect the new face of medicine.”
The Steering Committee will make its recommendations for the new curriculum in Spring 2006 and immediately following the Implementation Phase of the Pritzker Initiative will begin. Faculty and students representing the broadest possible crosssection of the Biological Sciences Division will be involved over the 16 month process before the new curriculum rolls out in fall 2007. “This process allows us the opportunity to define what medical education will be at Pritzker for the foreseeable future,” comments Dr. Rosner. “Our challenge is to create a curriculum that will impart to our students the experience and knowledge necessary to be effective physicians, that will integrate recent innovations in medical education, and that will allow our students to most effectively face the challenges of being clinicians, educators, and researchers in the 21st century.”
