PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine have launched Med Ed, a program to enhance the teaching abilities of those who teach America’s doctors. 

The collaborative program targeting educational leaders in academic medicine will begin in August.

The Med Ed program will offer a master of education degree or certificate in an area of concentration.  It will include four blocks: Learning in Academic Medicine, Research and Evaluation, Technology in Education and Educational Leadership.

Although the degree is awarded through the Graduate School of Education, courses are co-taught by faculty from both GSE and Perelman.   Its interdisciplinary curriculum will equip participants with the tools and skills necessary to become leaders in the field of medical education.

“The program is custom designed,” Doug Lynch, Penn GSE vice dean, said.  “It pulls faculty from across Penn in a unique way to best meet the needs of people who teach in academic medicine.”

Med Ed organizers say this executive-format program has been created from the ground up specifically for medical educators.  It offers participants the opportunity to engage with physicians and educators to expand their leadership skills and to be able to teach more effectively.

“There is a growing awareness that physicians and other health-care professionals need to become better teachers – teachers of patients, teachers of each other, as well as teachers of the next generation of providers,” Allison Ballantine, program director and assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said.  “This is a time of tremendous change in health care.  A huge piece of this is about learning to do things more safely, more humanistically and in a more cost-efficient manner.  For this we need good teachers.  That is what this program is about.”

Med Ed’s curriculum is designed to accommodate participants to continue their full-time positions while completing their coursework.  The program involves mandatory on-site learning periods, online classes and independent projects.