Hosted by the American Medical Association and the College of Medicine Dean’s office, about 75 students attended lectures by Layton McCurdy, M.D., dean of the College of Medicine and David Garr, M.D., associate dean of primary care.

They spoke on the need for the Medical University to change its curriculum to accommodate community needs. McCurdy and Garr call for shifting MUSC's educational emphasis from specialization to a more community-responsive orientation by increasing the students’ exposure to community experiences.

The ultimate goal is to establish a partnerships among the students, communities, and the health professions, in order to increase student competency in primary/community care.

The seminar began with McCurdy posing dilemmas facing today’s medical students:

• patients and physicians are not getting enough personal contact with each other
• ethical dilemmas are becoming complicated by increased availability to technology, even though this technology is allowing students to take more responsibility for their education
• preventive medicine is beginning to take precedence over reactive medicine
• evidence-based decision making will be required to include cost/benefit analysis.

The seminar concluded with Garr’s slide presentation of how the university is going to better prepare students for primary care.

Under the Primary Care Educational Program, a curriculum committee is formed to identify the core content and competencies of primary care, create a curriculum that will prepare students on how to manage the most common clinical problems, form working groups that will assess that curriculum, and propose new content.