“Is There a Doctor on Board?”: Creating a Prehospital Medical Emergency Curriculum for Medical Students

Abstract

New programs for Emergency Medical Technician certification during the initial preclinical phase of medical school show promising benefits for medical student development at a time when the prehospital sector of healthcare—including the spectrum from emergency medical services to community health and disaster medicine programs—continues to grow. However, such courses are time-intensive and difficult to integrate into existing programs. The major objectives of this work include: (1) the creation of a new curriculum to translate basic principles of early medical education to the prehospital setting using an interactive, team-based, case-based, flipped classroom model of learning that incorporates medical simulation technology and near-peer education; (2) the completion of a pilot research study to assess changes in objective knowledge and self-reported confidence among participants to evaluate the effectiveness of the course; and (3) the establishment of this curriculum as an annual offering at Harvard Medical School, as well as the dissemination of preliminary findings from this research study—along with the blueprint for this curriculum—to promote its adoption and continuous improvement at other institutions.