Medical Students Commit to Choosing Wisely At STARS Summit
On December 2, 50 medical students gathered at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin for the inaugural U.S.-based Choosing Wisely STARS (Students and Trainees Advocating for Resource Stewardship) Leadership Summit. The U.S. STARS program is modeled after the Canadian STARS initiative spearheaded by Choosing Wisely Canada.
The summit attendees brought ideas and enthusiasm for reducing low-value care. They left with the resources, support and direction to make a difference for patients at their medical institutions.
The students—selected in pairs from 25 medical schools across the country—attended collaborative sessions and seminars to learn about tools for promoting high-value care, and made a commitment to advance Choosing Wisely.
Each pair of students came up with a project they could implement in their organizations. Ideas included:
- Integrating Choosing Wisely/SOAP-V into instructions for writing clinical notes in electronic health records
- Creating Choosing Wisely interest groups, lunch talks and journal clubs
- Asking faculty to include specialty societies’ Choosing Wisely recommendations in rotations
- Adding patient questions about costs as a barrier to care into objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE)
- Adding Choosing Wisely to basic Practice of Medicine and Ethics courses
- Adding Choosing Wisely to standardized patient experiences
- Incorporating the hospital/medical/lab bill into weekly case presentations
In a post-Summit survey, 100 percent of the attendees agreed that they felt more prepared to lead discussions at their medical school about Choosing Wisely.
Learn more:
- Read more about the event in a blog post authored by U.S. STARS organizer Dr. Chris Moriates on the Dell Medical School blog.
- Follow #ChoosingWiselySTARS on social media
- Watch video interviews with students.
