GUMC Update

GWIM Hosts Lecture Which Confronts the Challenges for Medicine in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous World

June 1, 2009

On May 28, Georgetown Women in Medicine (GWIM) hosted a lecture by Dr. Carol Aschenbrener entitled “Prospects for the Future Landscape of Medical Education: Shaping Physicians for a ‘VUCA’ World.” Aschenbrener serves as the Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and is a renowned pioneer in the field of academic medicine.

According to Aschenbrener, doctors face a difficult world defined by its volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) nature. Faced with new demands, an uncertain economic climate, impending reform, shifting cultural attitudes, an ever increasing flow of new information, and other challenges, the medical profession requires a paradigm shift to function effectively in this environment. “I think we all agree that we live in pretty edgy times, and that we have a lot of social issues to deal with, and they affect how we practice medicine,” Aschenbrener said. In order to meet these challenges, she recommends a new paradigm that includes a shift to a patient centered system, more collaboration within the system, more focus on health, and the early confrontation of potentially problematic issues.

In order to facilitate this change, a focus on core competencies, as opposed to merely memorized facts, is required. “The challenge in light of these things happening in our environment, I think, is for us to develop actually a system, of physician education, physician formation, that is linked across the entire span of a physicians life. [One] that focuses on the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and habits of mind that will allow them to maintain continued competency,” Aschenbrener told the audience. During her lecture, she outlined how the idea of core competency revolves around focusing on a doctor’s delivery of care, as well as their ability to find information and to actually integrate that new information into their practice.

For more information on GWIM, click here.

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