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CHICAGO—The pre-clinical rheumatology curriculum at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, used to consist mainly of portions of a musculoskeletal course, with up to only three instructional hours, and not always with a rheumatologist in the room with students. Systemic autoimmune diseases were never fully discussed in any of the pre-clinical blocks.
Feedback from a focus group of third-year students told a fairly grim story. Students felt they weren’t learning what they needed to know. One student lamented that lupus seemed to pop up all the time and wished someone would “take 25 minutes and tell me what lupus is.”
“They felt autoimmunity was everywhere, and they didn’t know what it was,” said Beth Jonas, MD, professor of medicine and rheumatology fellowship director at UNC. “People were peppering [the subject] through the curriculum, but it wasn’t adequately covered.”