Pre-Medical students learn doctoring at Jump Simulation in VR and with real lifesaving skills.

What does it take to engage the best and brightest among us?

My opinion, borne out over years of delivering professional adult learning, is that a personal experience that challenges and allows for feedback and reflection is the key.

If we are trying to encourage the already motivated among us, we can set a high bar, give proper guidance, and let them show us what they can do. In designing the inaugural Jump Pre-Medical Immersion experience, we gave students from Knox College and others a real sampling of medical school. They learned to read ECGs from a cardiology and emergency medicine professors from the University of Illinois College of Medicine, they observed in surgery and in clinics, and they were lectured and tested by standardized patients, just like our medical students.

Paramount to this experience was the work we did with them on rapport building, communication, and teamwork. These 'non-technical' skills are the cornerstone of doctoring. These skills assist in coming to and understanding a diagnosis, in treatment and patient centered decision making, and in patient safety.

They flourished. They worked hard. We know they learned something. Not just because they told us, but because they showed us. Congratulations to this inaugural class. We look forward to seeing them achieve their goals to become excellent clinicians in service to to the injured, ill, and suffering.

OSF Innovation; Advancing Simulation in service to life.