Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine
| File:Hdrlogo.gif | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Established | 2004 |
| Dean | Andrew J. Fishleder, MD
|
Academic staff | 1,500 |
| Students | 160 (5-year program)
|
| Location | , , |
| Campus | Urban |
| Website | CCLCM |
The Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine (CCLCM) was established in 2004 through a collaboration of the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University.
CCLCM is a 5-year program with the goal of training physician-scientists. The 3rd or 4th year is spent doing full-time research and a thesis is required for graduation. In 2007, five students received prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellowships.
Innovative Curriculum
- Each year only 32 students are accepted.
- PBL curriculum. Unlike traditional teaching methods that use a faculty-driven lecture format, PBL is student-centered and student-driven with active participation from each student in a PBL group, which includes eight medical students and one faculty facilitator.
- Clinical experience. Students are paired with a primary care physician during the first two years. First years have biweekly clinic and second years weekly clinic. Before starting on the wards in the 3rd years students will have already conducted over 100 patient interviews and physical exams.
- Portfolio assessments. There are no grades or comprehensive examinations. Rather students utilize feedback as evidence of their progress in educational portfolios. This feedback comes from both peer and faculty, allowing students to identify their own strengths and weaknesses as compared to defined performance standards. There are weekly content assessments which consist of multiple choice and essay questions, but these are not assigned formal grades.
Controversies
The College Program has seen a high attrition rate of its Deans during the early years of the program's inception; some for questionable reasons. One of the deans, Dr. Lindsey Henson, who is responsible for the program's fundemental design left before the second class was admitted. No reason was given as to why Dr. Henson departed, but the sudden and immediate nature of her resignation hinted to internecine struggles [1].
Perhaps the most visible power struggle to occur in the programs short duration was between the prominant cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol, the medical college Provost, and former head of Cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic and the current Cleveland Clinic CEO, Dr. Toby Cosgrove. Topol was involved as an expert witness in a high profile case against Merck Medical. The CEO of Merck, Raymond Gilmartin, went to Harvard Business School with a chairman of the board at the Cleveland Clinic, Malachi Mixon, and after Topol testified in Vioxx court case he was stripped of appointments as Chief Academic Office and Provost of CCLCM by Cosgrove. Apparently, the Merck CEO called Mal Mixon and told him to get rid of Topol because of his work on Vioxx[2] . The reason given to the Cleveland Plain Dealer regarding Topol's demotion was to streamline administrative reporting. However, the new administrative structure left Dr. Andrew Fishleder, the Executive dean, reporting to another link in the chain between himself and Dr. Cosgrove, similar to the same system that was in place when Topol was Provost. This rendered the streamlining move logic as obsolete and left many questions unanswered. Students in the first year class sent a letter to the board of trustees prior to the rubber stamping of the move[3]; however, the letter was not admitted into to the board's proceedings according to the same plain dealer article.
A more recent controversy is in regard to the school's affiliation with Case Western. Currently, the Lerner College cannot independantly grant degrees. As a result, students recieve their degrees from Case Western. However, Dr. Toby Cosgrove has been hunting for a replacement institution for some time, having approached various east coast schools. The Cleveland Plain Dealer noted that this could have been due to Case Medical lending its name to the University Hospital program (one of the Clinic's competitors). The most serious possibility for a replacement with Case is Columbia University[4] . How this would affect the degrees of the earlier classes has not been answered as of yet.
External links
- Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellows, 2007
- (1)
- (2)
- (3)
- (4)
 | This article on a midwestern United States institution of higher education is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |