(Washington, DC)—Georgetown University has received a five-year, $1.7 million NIH grant to develop and implement a comprehensive, innovative program that incorporates complementary and alternative medicine (also known as CAM) into the School of Medicine curriculum.
The overarching goal of the project—one of only a few of its kind nationwide—is to integrate CAM throughout the four-year medical school curriculum, so that the School’s future physicians will have an enhanced understanding of CAM as well as the ability to effectively communicate about CAM practices with future patients. In addition to imparting knowledge, another aim of the initiative is to increase students’ understanding of self-awareness and self-care.
“This program really is about training a new kind of physician,” said Aviad Haramati, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics, and the principal investigator of this project. “We’re introducing a new paradigm of medical education that integrates CAM philosophies into conventional approaches to healthcare.”
While many of the nation’s 125 accredited schools of medicine offer CAM courses or electives, Georgetown’s curricular changes will be further-reaching and more comprehensive in several unique ways.
First, whereas CAM programs at many other schools typically consist of optional elective courses that are open to relatively few students, at Georgetown, information about CAM practices will be integrated into basic science courses that are required of every medical student. Additionally, CAM education will be incorporated into courses that span the entire four years of a student’s medical education.
“After this program is implemented, every Georgetown University Medical School graduate will leave here with some understanding of the basic philosophies and principals of CAM,” said Haramati. However, he also emphasized that “the goal of this program is not to turn our medical students into CAM experts or practitioners. Rather, the aim is to enhance the undergraduate medical curriculum in such a way that our future doctors will be able to communicate intelligently and appropriately with their patients about a wide range of alternative therapies.”
Background Information on CAM
According to a 1998 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 42 percent of Americans used an alternative therapy in 1997. In addition, Americans spent more than $27 billion on these therapies that year, exceeding out-of-pocket spending for all U.S. hospitalizations. Yet, despite the dramatic increase in the public’s use of alternative therapies, less than 40 percent of those therapies used were disclosed to physicians (JAMA 280: 1569-1575, 1998).
However, the issue of whether CAM should be taught at all in medical schools is a matter of ongoing debate. Since the rise in CAM’s popularity over the past decade, many traditional, mainstream medical practitioners have viewed any type of CAM education with skepticism because of the perception that CAM therapies and practices lack of the same type of rigorous scientific testing and scrutiny that is applied to more traditional therapies.
Haramati, a research scientist, points out that that is precisely why it is important to expose medical students to CAM practices and principles within the confines of the basic sciences, taught by faculty members who are research scientists and who will critically evaluate potential benefits—as well as possible dangers—of complementary and alternative medicine.
“It is important to educate students in a way that is simultaneously open-minded and skeptical,” he said. “For example, as more and more consumers turn to supplements and herbs, there are many drug-herb interactions that physicians absolutely need to know about. They need to know what is useful, what is useless, and, most importantly, what is downright dangerous.”
Specifics of Georgetown’s Program
The five-year process of implementing Georgetown’s CAM educational initiative will take place in a series of steps. While some initiatives will be incorporated gradually, others will begin immediately, and some have already been implemented. For example, Carlos Suarez-Quian, PhD, who teaches a required basic science course in Gross Anatomy already has incorporated a lecture on the Anatomy of Acupuncture. Michael Lumpkin, PhD, chair and professor of physiology and biophysics, has incorporated lectures on relaxation techniques, biofeedback and stress management into his Physiology and Endocrinology courses.
In addition, in the coming academic year, a course/workshop entitled “Mind-Body Medicine: an Experiential and Didactic Introduction,” will be developed and implemented for first year students. This course, which will be held in small group sessions of eight to ten students, will cover a wide variety of mind-body approaches including self-awareness, relaxation, nutrition, meditation, and physical exercise. The aim of this class is to increase students’ self-awareness, to provide them with the tools for self-care and stress-management and to serve as a general introduction to the CAM field. It will begin with just 40 enrolled students (led by eight faculty members), but by year five of the CAM initiative, it will be a required course for all first year medical students (and will be taught by 24 faculty members). “As far as we know, this is the first time such a course would be required of first-year American medical students,” Haramati said.
James Gordon, MD, a recognized leader in the field of CAM techniques, will be responsible for training Georgetown’s faculty members to lead the Mind-Body classes. Gordon, who is the director of Washington, D.C’s Center for Mind-Body Medicine, is also chair of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.
During the first two years of the project, the curricular objectives will be defined in terms of the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values related to CAM that students should obtain. In subsequent years, elements of the curricular objectives will be gradually integrated into the remaining preclinical courses and most of the clinical clerkships.
The final phase of this project will involve expansion and integration of a CAM research component, and the development of a CAM-relevant master’s degree program by the end of the five-year grant period.
A 15-member curriculum committee, made up of faculty, students and outside consultants, will meet regularly to develop and implement this educational initiative in CAM. The work of the curriculum committee will be managed by a 7 member steering committee.
Key Faculty
The members of the CAM curriculum steering committee are:
- Aviad Haramati, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics and director of education
- Vassilios Papadopoulos, DPharm, PhD, professor of cell biology
- James Gordon, MD, adjunct professor of family medicine and psychiatry
- Michael Lumpkin, PhD, professor and chair of the department of physiology and biophysics
- Gary Kaplan, DO, adjunct associate professor of family medicine
- Hakima Amri, PhD, research assistant professor of cell biology
- Louis Jacques, MD, associate professor of family medicine/associate dean preclinical curriculum
To arrange an interview with Dr. Aviad Haramati or any of the other faculty members involved in this initiative, please contact Amy DeMaria at 202-687-5100 or demariaa@georgetown.edu
Georgetown University Medical Center includes the nationally ranked School of Medicine, School of Nursing and Health Studies, and a biomedical research enterprise. For more information, please visit http://www.georgetown.edu/gumc