Entrepreneurship teaching and learning for medical school faculty

We need more entrepreneurial medical schools. Here are some ways to create them,

A key element is training the trainers, i.e. entrepreneurship teaching and learning development for medical school faculty who are engaged, understand the "why" and how they can support the entrepreneurial mission in basic science courses and overseeing students on clinical rotations. In too many schools, the problem is that the faculty are resistant to change and are unwilling and/or unable to participate. They become the problem, not the solution and a bottleneck to progress. Sometimes they are saboteurs.

One of the biggest barriers to developing, integrating, and implementing entrepreneurial curricula within health professions education is the lack of faculty comfort with these approaches. For those with familiarity of the concepts of innovation, we infer from the lack of novel methods for teaching innovation that there may also be paucity of teacher development for those with subject content expertise. Having knowledgeable and engaged faculty support is essential to introducing new educational programs and curricula, but these faculty members must also be trained to truly match their innovative concepts with modern, evidence-informed teaching strategies that match their curricular goals. In our literature review, programs utilized private partners, guest lecturers, and local faculty to form the foundation of the learning experience—none of which are ground-breaking methodologies for fostering innovation or entrepreneurship. Effective selection and development of these resources is fundamental to the creation and delivery of all health innovation and entrepreneurship education.

Here are some reasons why we should teach entrepreneurship and the business of medicine to medical students and faculty.

Here is an introductory course outline in entrepreneurship for medical students.

But, what should an introduction to entrepreneurship teaching and learning include for basic science and clinical faculty who do not have innovation and entrepreneurship domain expertise include?

The learning objective of the module should be to know how to integrate healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship topics into basic science courses and clinical rotations by challenging students with case based, problem based and project based learning in real world settings and applications to help them perfect sickcare entrepreneurial knowledge, skills, attitudes and competencies.

Content should include:

1. Explaining why innovation and entrepreneurship education and training is important and a part of your medical school strategic vision, why now and why your school?
2. An overview of high level, basic concepts of biomedical and clinical innovation and entrepreneurship.
3. Incentives and rewards for participation
4. Examples of pedagogical techniques for introducing the subject in courses and rotations.

Here are some examples:

5. Identifying other faculty development resources to support continuous improvement and learning.

In order to address this shortcoming, these researchers believe it would be beneficial to act at two points: (1) increased interdisciplinary work alignment amongst schools (e.g. design schools, engineering schools, architecture schools) and (2) ongoing faculty development to foster understanding of entrepreneurial/innovation concepts. Interprofessional inspiration may also be found readily in terms of looking to other health professions and observing the type of education they have created around innovation and entrepreneurship

Other tools are:

1. Breaking down innovation silos
2. Creating local resource asset maps
3. Removing the barriers for faculty interested in collaborating with their regional ecosystems
4. Giving promotion and tenure credit for the scholarship of entrepreneurship
5. Allocating non-clinical time to learn and practice new skills and acquire new knowledge
6. Knowledge exchange programs with industry and other universitites
7. Interprofessional entrepreneurship education and training
8. Rethink the triple threat in recruitment, development and training
9. Offer entrepreneurial fellowships like this program for scientists and engineers.
10. Using AI to give feedback to students

Successful entrepreneurial universities require the recruitment, development, retention and promotion of faculty and leaders with an entrepreneurial mindset. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Take it now.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack and Editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship