JIAMSE Highlights - 20-2s "Preparing Healthcare Faculty for the Millennial Gneration"

Dear IAMSE Members,

I write to provide highlights from the Journal and last regular meeting of the Association in New Orleans. It was interesting to note at the IAMSE 2010 meeting that Dr. James B. McGee, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, delivered a unique keynote lecture entitled “Preparing Healthcare Faculty for the Millennial Generation.” His lecture has recently been published in JIAMSE, 20(2s):166-169. Dr. McGee writes about those born between the years 1984 and 2000, better known as the Millennial Generation, Generation Y or Echo Boomers. He observes that learning and teaching healthcare is different due to the contributing factors of technology and resultant impact on both learners and educators. The ‘millennials’ know life as a set of technological features, including the Internet, email, text messaging and other advanced forms of communication like teleconferencing via iChat, Skype, Google Wave, Adobe Connect, FreeConference or uStream. Their connections also include social networking on Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Twitter, Ning, Syndicaster, LinkedIn, Six Apart, hi5 and other websites. In short, these changes impact the classroom, requiring faculty educators to better hone their skill set(s) to those that lend credence to the use of digitized knowledge and problem solving methods. It is not enough to provide students with lecture handouts and a set of literature citations. . .better, of course, in today’s curriculum to ‘teach’ students where to find information and how to use it in deciphering complex healthcare problems. Millennial learners now have the expectation that all lectures be synchronized to slides “via the Internet within minutes of every lecture” and provided in multiple digital formats and varied languages so instant playback can be effected on laptops, iPods, iPads, iPhones and other handheld devices, including a plethora of smart phones. Dr. McGee concludes that “By understanding the unique characteristics and needs of millennial learners and embracing the valuable aspects of the technologies they know so well, modern [medical] educators can help them become the next great generation of healthcare professionals.”


Floyd C. Knoop, Ph.D.
Creighton University School of Medicine
Member, IAMSE Publication Committee
IAMSE Editorial Board