KU School of Medicine-Wichita

Logs burn in a video on the screen as the seven first-year students of Group 29 settle into seats at the T-shaped table in Room 2462, their classroom at KU School of Medicine-Wichita. They say hello to one another and to facilitator Mike Bradley, a biology professor at Newman University across town. A couch and a Sam's-size box of snacks are among signs they spend a great deal of time here, as are whiteboards full of notes about anemia, Lyme disease and other conditions they're studying. They've done their prep work, including videos, relevant portions of "Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine" and more, and have taken an ungraded quiz to assess their grasp of the material. The students are not only studying basic science and medicine, but are also on the front lines of ACE, the new curriculum rolled out in July 2017 at all three campuses of the medical school. The intent of ACE (for Active, Competency- Based and Excellence-Driven) is to close the traditional divide between the first two years of medical school — which have long involved lecture-intensive passive learning — and the final two years of clinical-heavy training. The goal is to better prepare doctors for the health care system they'll encounter, one requiring them to work in teams and be lifelong learners, while teaching them in a more interactive manner that can help them better retain information and catch up faster if they don't. And they get the clinical exposure that they love early on. This Wednesday, the Group 29 students are taking part in case-based collaborative learning, a key component of ACE designed to help them learn basic science while demonstrating how it actually applies to practicing medicine. Via their laptops, they're just now getting details of the case — one of two they pick apart weekly — and they're digging in: It's 2 a.m. and the lab has just called a family medicine doctor with results. Hemoglobin levels are alarmingly low for a 42-year-old woman the doctor had seen earlier. The doctor calls the patient and tells her to get to the emergency room right now. Over the next hour or so the students — Juan Ruiz, Sapna Shah, Kaleb Todd, Zachary Unruh, Mackenzie Wahl, David Watson and Brynn Wright — will discuss matters both medical and practical. Is it hemolytic anemia, as suspected? What could be causing anemia? Could antibiotics be to blame? Could it be something else, like sickle cell? Does she have health insurance? Who's responsible for follow-through, the lab or the doctor's office? Should the woman drive herself to the emergency room ("I'd be worried about her even walking to her car," Wright said.) or should the doctor call an ambulance? Should she get a transfusion or steroids, or both? The new ACE curriculum emphasizes teamwork, lifelong learning, clinical training and lots of interaction D R A W I N G A N ACE 12

• Cover