Medical education needs to adapt to students’ learning styles

Medical education is constantly evolving to keep pace with the rapidly advancing world of modern medical practice. The teaching model that has dominated for the last few decades — four years divided between lecture, study, and clinical rotations — is giving way to programs that include more creative approaches to learning. Yet these reforms may not be enough to produce the innovative, dynamic thinkers required by medicine’s expanding frontiers.

The curriculum overhaul at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine plans to with so-called active learning approaches that let students learn material in a more hands-on way, as in simulation labs and group case studies. At the new Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, students are required to train and practice in the field rather than