University of New Mexico School of Medicine
University of New Mexico School of Medicine
The School of Medicine has gained national and international recognition for its constantly evolving curricular innovations that have aimed at adapting adult learning theory to medical education.
Educational emphasis has shifted from the teaching of facts to students learning the skills they need to be effective lifelong learners. Current educational initiatives are targeted at improving the integration of the basic sciences and clinical medicine, shifting teaching and learning to ambulatory and community settings, integrating case-based learning throughout the curriculum, and emphasizing computer literacy and information management skills.
Convention and Innovation Combined
The four-year curriculum incorporates successful aspects of conventional (lecture-based) medical school curricula with innovative aspects of self-directed learning found in case-based curricula. These aspects include case-based and student-centered learning; early clinical skills learning coupled with sustained, community-based learning; the incorporation of population and behavioral perspectives into the clinical years; peer teaching; computer-assisted instruction; and biweekly seminars on professional responsibility. The curriculum also addresses the historically unmet as well as changing health care needs of our population and progressive learning needs of future physicians.
Charting new territory in an old frontier
In the early 1960s a pioneering group of medical educators, recruited from across the United States, undertook an audacious experiment. They came together to create a medical school in a state beset by endemic poverty and daunting geographic barriers.
Today, New Mexicans are justifiably proud of their School of Medicine, which owes so much to the foresight, vision and courage of those educational pioneers. Over and over, we learn of their fearless questioning of the status quo and their compulsion to ask, "Why?" They are icons to us, but in their day they clearly relished being iconoclasts.
The school they created is celebrated for its innovations in medical education, and has earned a reputation for making diversity in the physician workforce a priority. Its programs in rural and family medicine are nationally recognized and its groundbreaking Combined BA/MD Degree Program has provided a new pathway for students from throughout New Mexico to pursue a medical career.
Fulfilling the promise of opportunity
In 1964, our founders had a view of the value a medical school could bring to our state. They understood that New Mexico's rich and vibrant cultures were invaluable assets to all. Their compact with the state was to provide a greater opportunity for New Mexicans to have a medical education, and at the same time, to help alleviate the severe shortage of medical care in much of the state.
We have been very successful in making good on those promises. More than 40 percent of New Mexico's practicing physicians are graduates of our school and its residency programs. We continue to place special emphasis on admitting state residents. The state of New Mexico supports us with public funding, as it has from the beginning. As in the beginning, challenges to our mission, are ongoing.
Delivering a diverse team for a diverse state
In addition to being educators and our research programs achieving national recognition, the School of Medicine has grown into being a major part of the health care infrastructure for the state of New Mexico, with programs in 141 communities. Through the UNM Health System, our providers deliver comprehensive health services to central New Mexico and serve the entire state as the referral center for Level I Trauma and for many specialty adult and pediatric medical and surgical services. Source: https://hsc.unm.edu/medicine/