{"id":24040,"date":"2015-09-16T09:36:39","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T13:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=24040"},"modified":"2015-09-16T09:36:39","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T13:36:39","slug":"karen-antman-leads-aamc-council-of-deans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2015\/09\/16\/karen-antman-leads-aamc-council-of-deans\/","title":{"rendered":"Karen Antman Leads AAMC Council of Deans"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chairs group addressing funding, residencies, student debt<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Karen
Karen Antman was recently appointed chair of the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Photo by Randy Gross<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Karen Antman, dean of the BU School of Medicine\u00a0and provost of the Medical Campus, has added another title to her r\u00e9sum\u00e9: chair of the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges<\/a> (AAMC).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually kind of fun,\u201d Antman says of her new position. \u201cWe find out that the things we\u2019re dealing with here at BU are things our colleagues are dealing with all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The goal of the AAMC is to strengthen medical care by supporting education, research, and patient care activities carried out by its member institutions. Antman\u2019s responsibilities include representing the interests of council members to the rest of the association and beyond, on topics ranging from research funding from the National Institutes of Health<\/a>\u00a0to the shortage of primary care physicians for an aging US citizenry.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the American population was increasing, the experts thought we wouldn\u2019t need that many more doctors, because everybody would be in managed care. But it didn\u2019t turn out that way,\u201d Antman says. \u201cExperts now project not only too few physicians, but particularly too few primary care doctors. We have about two-thirds specialists, whereas much of the developed world has about two-thirds primary care doctors. We have fewer physicians per 100,000 Americans than other developed countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another pressing issue facing medical school deans, Antman says, is the need for more residency positions. Physicians who graduate from medical school cannot get a license without doing a residency, where they practice under supervision. Available residency slots are growing much more slowly than the number of graduates from medical (MD) and osteopathic medicine (DO) schools. US citizens graduating from international medical schools are also competing for residency slots. \u201cFor the first time, a substantial number of US medical school graduates are not matching to residencies,\u201d she says, but this has not yet become a particular problem at MED.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1876, the nonprofit AAMC represents all 144 accredited medical schools in the United States and all 17 in Canada, nearly 400 teaching hospitals and health systems, and 90 academic and scientific societies. It represents 148,000 faculty members, 115,000 resident physicians, and 83,000 medical students.<\/p>\n

Making the deans\u2019 interests known in Washington is part of the job, but don\u2019t call it lobbying: \u201cWe prefer to call it education,\u201d Antman says.<\/p>\n

At BU, Antman oversees the operations of the School of Medicine, the Goldman School of Dental Medicine, and the School of Public Health. Among her tasks as chair of the deans council will be fostering discussions on research, education, and administrative best practices. She says that a frequent discussion topic recently has been the best way for medical students to master the enormous amount of required\u00a0material. That no longer means eight hours of lectures a day, a notably ineffective way to learn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new pedagogy requires students to learn the material from didactic modules available online and come prepared\u00a0to apply that knowledge\u00a0in class discussions during the day,\u201d Antman says. \u201cSeeing patients is particularly helpful.\u2026It\u2019s a lot easier to remember Mrs. Smith\u2019s peripheral neuropathy, a common complication of diabetes, and the drugs that she takes and any side effects than it is to memorize the names of drugs and their effects and side effects without the patient context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her role with the council also gives her a chance to talk up MED. \u201cThe opportunity to showcase the University naturally is a real advantage,\u201d Antman says, particularly its achievements in innovative research and teaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NIH knows us and they fund us disproportionately well,\u201d she says. \u201cI want to keep that going. As chair, you get a bully pulpit to support NIH funding and federal funding in general, which is incredibly important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rising student debt is another major concern among deans of medical schools. \u201cThe median debt for a medical student is about $180,000,\u201d Antman says. When you factor in that they frequently marry one another\u2014\u201cThey don\u2019t see anybody else for four years,\u201d she says\u2014\u201cthey can have a $400,000 mortgage without the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

To help remedy that situation here, on Antman\u2019s watch a $30 million medical student residence<\/a>\u00a0was built on the Medical Campus; it opened in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason we started planning it was because living in Boston is more expensive than for other medical schools, so we had to put in housing that was affordable,\u201d she says. \u201cIt turned out to be so much better for lots of other reasons, including collegiality and safety, but the first reason was trying to manage student debt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antman was to have succeeded the outgoing deans council chair in November, but stepped forward to begin the post when her predecessor changed jobs. (She had been chair-elect for the past year and a half and also sits on the AAMC board of directors.)<\/p>\n

\u201cKaren Antman brings experience and a remarkable clarity of thought, and she\u2019s an excellent communicator,\u201d says John E. Prescott, AAMC chief academic officer. The association welcomes 25 to 30 new deans a year, and Antman is especially effective in reaching out to help them \u201cnot just survive, but thrive\u201d in the job, says Prescott.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s important given \u201cthe pace of change right now confronting all of academic medicine,\u201d he says. Deans are faced with \u201cthe complexities of a constantly changing patient care environment and dwindling resources in research, and they\u2019re asked to do incredibly more complex jobs across all the missions.\u201d<\/p>\n

For leadership conference issue discussions, the AAMC typically invites representatives of its various constituencies. \u201cThey put us in a room all at the same time,\u201d Antman says. \u201cWe\u2019ll have 15 deans, 15 hospital directors, faculty, practice planners, residents, and students in the room, and we\u2019ll go after an area. It\u2019s complex to put it mildly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not long ago, she says, one such gathering tackled faculty complaints that the emphasis on seeing patients quickly was squeezing out time for teaching and research.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that was just us, and we get down there and find it\u2019s a national problem,\u201d Antman says. The AAMC offers \u201ca forum where you can get the groups together, and in quite a civilized way, hash out differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

This BU Today<\/em> story was written by Joel Brown<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karen Antman, dean of the BU School of Medicine and provost of the Medical Campus, has added another title to her r\u00e9sum\u00e9: chair of the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[127,91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24040"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24044,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24040\/revisions\/24044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}