64B8-15.009. Resources for the Educational Program

(1) Finances. The substantial cost of conducting a certified educational program leading to the M.D. or equivalent degree must be supported by sufficient financial resources. Dependence upon tuition must not cause schools to seek enrollment of more students than their total resources can accommodate and provide with a sound education experience.

(2) General Facilities. A medical school must have, or be assured use of, buildings and equipment that are quantitatively and qualitatively adequate to provide an environment conducive to high productivity of faculty and students. Wide geographic separation between facilities may reduce the effectiveness of the educational program. The facilities must include faculty offices, student classrooms and laboratories, appropriate facilities for students, offices for administrative and support staff, and a library. Access to an auditorium sufficiently large to accommodate the student body is desirable. The school should be equipped to conduct biomedical research and must provide facilities for humane care of animals when animals are used in teaching and research.

(3) Faculty.

(a) Members of the faculty must have the capability and continued commitment to be effective teachers. Effective teaching requires knowledge of the discipline, and an understanding of pedagogy, including construction of a curriculum consistent with learning objectives, subject to internal and external formal evaluation. The administration and the faculty should have knowledge of methods for measurement of student performance in accordance with stated educational objectives and national norms.

(b) Persons appointed to faculty positions must have demonstrated achievements within their disciplines commensurate with their faculty rank. It is expected that faculty members will have a commitment to continuing scholarly productivity, thereby contributing to the educational environment of the medical school.

(c) In each of the major disciplines basic to medicine and in the clinical medical sciences, a sufficient number of faculty members must be appointed who possess, in addition to a comprehensive knowledge of their major disciplines, expertise in one or more subdivisions or specialties within each of these disciplines. In the clinical sciences, the number and kind of specialists appointed should relate to the amount of patient care activities required to conduct effective and intensive clinical teaching.

(d) In addition, physicians practicing in the community can make a significant contribution to the educational program of the medical school, subject to individual expertise, commitment to medical education, and availability. Practicing physicians appointed to the faculty, either on a part-time basis or as volunteers, should be effective teachers, serve as role models for students, and provide insight into contemporary methods of providing patient care. The quality of an educational program is enhanced by the participation of volunteer faculty in faculty governance, especially in defining educational goals and objectives.

(e) There must be clear written policies for the appointment, renewal of appointment, promotion, retention and dismissal of members of the faculty. The appointment process must involve the faculty, the appropriate departmental heads and the dean. Each appointee should receive a clear definition of the terms of appointment, responsibilities, line of communication, privileges and benefits; and policy on practice earnings, if applicable.

(f) The education of both medical students and graduate physicians requires an academic environment that provides close interaction among the faculty members so that those skilled in teaching and research in the basic sciences can maintain awareness of the relevance of their disciplines to clinical problems. Such an environment is equally important for clinicians, for from the sciences basic to medicine comes new knowledge which can be applied to clinical problems. A medical school should endeavor to provide a setting in which all faculty members work closely together in teaching, research and health care delivery in order to disseminate existing knowledge and to generate new knowledge of importance to the health and welfare of mankind.

(g) The dean and a committee of the faculty must determine medical school policies. This committee typically consists of the heads of major departments, but may be organized in any manner that brings reasonable and appropriate faculty influence into the governance and policymaking processes of the school. The full faculty should meet often enough to provide an opportunity for all to discuss, establish, or otherwise become acquainted with medical school policies and practices.

(4) Library.

(a) The medical school library should be a major component of the school’s program of teaching and learning. Attitudes of lifelong learning can only be instilled by instruction in the production, storage and retrieval of new knowledge. Use and importance of the library can be imparted to students by example of faculty.

(b) The medical students and faculty must have ready access to a well-maintained and catalogued library, sufficient in size and breadth to support the educational programs offered by the institution. The library should receive the leading national and international biomedical and clinical periodicals, the current numbers of which should be readily accessible. The library and any other learning resources should be equipped to allow students to learn new methods of retrieving and managing information, as well as to use self-instructional materials. A professional library staff should supervise the library and provide instruction in its use.

(c) If the library serving the medical school is part of a medical center or a university library system, the professional library staff must be responsive to the needs of the medical school, its teaching hospitals and the faculty, resident staff and students who may require extended access to the journal and reference book collection. The librarian should be familiar with the methods for maintaining relationships between the library and national library systems and resources, and with the current technology available to provide services in non-print materials. If the faculty and students served by the library are dispersed, the utilization of departmental and branch libraries should be facilitated by the librarian and by the administration and faculty of the school.

(d) If the language of instruction in the medical school is not the principal language of a significant portion of the students, it is the duty of the library to facilitate translation through purchase of materials in multiple languages when possible.

(5) Clinical Teaching Facilities.

(a) The medical school must have adequate resources to provide clinical instruction to its medical students. Resources must include ambulatory care facilities and hospitals where the full spectrum of medical care is provided and can be demonstrated. The medical school must demonstrate the capability of each hospital it uses to provide exemplary care for all patients. The number of hospital beds required for education cannot be specified by formula, but it is the responsibility of both the medical school and hospital to insure that the aggregation of clinical resources must be sufficient to permit students in each of the major clerkships (medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology and psychiatry) to work up and follow several new patients each week.

(b) Since undergraduate medical education is usually accompanied by the conduct of simultaneous and mutually supportive programs of graduate medical education, clinical facilities must be adequate for all levels of medical education for which the faculty and medical school are responsible. A hospital that provides a base for the education of medical students and perhaps other students must have adequate library resources, not only for the clinical staff, but also for the faculty and the students. Ready access to areas for individual study, for conferences, and for lectures is necessary.

(c) The nature of the relationship of the medical school to affiliated hospitals and other clinical resources is extremely important. There should be written agreements that define the responsibilities of each party. The degree of the school’s authority should reflect the extent that the affiliated clinical facility participates in the educational programs of the school. Most critical are the clinical facilities where required clinical clerkships are conducted. In affiliated institutions, the school’s department heads and senior clinical faculty members must have authority consistent with their responsibility for the instruction of students.

(d) It must be recognized that in the special relationship between the medical school and its affiliated teaching hospitals, it is imperative that the academic programs remain under the control of the faculty of the medical school in all medical school-hospital relationships.

Specific Authority 458.309, 458.314(4) FS. Law Implemented 458.314 FS. History–New 8-24-87, Formerly 21M-42.009, 61F6-42.009, 59R-15.009.