issue Education 2024

The Future of Healthcare Education

By Judy Masterson

As advancements in technology continue to accelerate, RFU and other healthcare educators must nurture the uniquely human and healing bond between patient and clinician.

What's Left for the Human?

The future of healthcare education is unfolding during a time of great disruption and innovation. A new industrial revolution — the acceleration of evolving technologies, including AI and machine learning — is driving transformation across both education and health. It’s changing the needs and expectations of learners and patients. It’s demanding more of the systems that serve both.

“We need to prepare our students to learn how to listen to patients, to understand diagnoses, to talk about how to get patients engaged in their treatment.”

Highly trained clinicians and researchers will help shape our AI future and lead ethical decision-making and strategies around machine-human interactions. They will guide our collective response to the central challenge ahead: How to keep the human — the learner, the patient, the clinician — at the center of learning and practice.

“We’re looking at a future where AI will review medical records, generate clinical diagnoses and treatment plans and help us offer more personalized care,” said RFU President and CEO Wendy Rheault, PT, PhD, FASAHP, FNAP, DipACLM. “AI-generated content, virtual reality and virtual tutoring will provide our students more personalized learning. So what’s left for the human to do? What’s left is what makes us uniquely human. It’s our ability to connect with other humans. It’s our ability to feel empathy and compassion. It’s our ability for caring.”

The Future Healthcare Workforce

James Carlson, PhD ’12, PA-C ’01, CHSE-A, vice president for interprofessional education and simulation, foresees a shift in the roles and responsibilities of healthcare professionals as generative AI — artificial intelligence capable of learning and developing novel concepts — frees them for the kinds of work at which humans excel.

“We’re struggling to care for the specific needs of an aging population, including chronic conditions,” he said. “We need to make sure we graduate enough clinicians with skills to practice at the top of their license, including advanced practice nurses, physicians, physician assistants, pharmacists and many other disciplines. We need to help our students build resilience and adaptability, help them learn how to leverage technology — for example, ambient scribing — that can address the pain points that cause burnout so we can spend more time on those human coaching needs.”

Dr. Feinberg speaks via Skype with Chicago Medical School students.

David T. Feinberg, MD ’89, MBA, chairman of Oracle Health, a global leader in the creation of healthcare technology, sees technology in a supportive but not starring role in health and healthcare education.

“Health care, fundamentally, is people caring for people,” Dr. Feinberg said. “Healthcare technology is simply a tool that allows that to happen.

“We need to prepare our students to learn how to listen to patients, to understand diagnoses, to talk about how to get patients engaged in their treatment. To understand that, oftentimes, a single patient may represent a problem in a community, and they need to know how to go upstream and solve those things. We must teach our students the emotional and intellectual side of being a caregiver. They shouldn’t have to worry how the technology works. That’s our job.”

Dr. Feinberg acknowledges that “technology has gone off the tracks.” He sees a persistent challenge in getting clinicians point-in-time information that allows them to coordinate care. He says a large language model for AI can free the caregiver from ever having to touch a computer when seeing an outpatient or when a nurse changes an IV. “But we still need humans in the loop,” he said. “They need to sign off on everything.”

He does not expect healthcare education to graduate new generations of computer scientists.

“There will be health professionals who really want to understand AI,” he said. “That’s great. We like to hire those people. But that’s not your typical caregiver. Your typical caregiver went into health care because someone in their family or a friend or they themselves had a problem, and it affected their lives. That’s what we want to tap into — that human connection.”

The Future of Teaching and Learning

Healthcare education continues to evolve as it focuses on creating a highly engaged culture of learning that is equitable, diverse and inclusive.

“Patients want partnership in addressing their wellness and prevention. We need to prepare our students for that level of interaction, to be good communicators, to grow in their ability and willingness to exercise compassion.”

“We are welcoming different student populations with different expectations, different needs, different life experiences,” said Provost Nancy Parsley, DPM, MHPE. “They’re looking for increased flexibility in the learning environment. They’re looking at options for education that match the current and future needs of health care, and that’s also what we want to provide.

“We need to prepare students not only to be successful across our academic programs now, but to be successful in patient care activities in an environment where technology is expanding exponentially. It’s not about mastering the technology. It’s about mastering how to learn. It’s about learning how to integrate technologies — when it’s appropriate — into our knowledge base.”

Because technology is making it easier for people to be better engaged in their own care, people are better engaged.

Students attend a session in the Center for Advanced Simulation in Healthcare’s amphitheater.

“Patients want partnership in addressing their wellness and prevention,” Dr. Parsley said. “We need to prepare our students for that level of interaction, to be good communicators, to grow in their ability and willingness to exercise compassion.”

Dr. Parsley also expects new roles and responsibilities to grow out of innovation in the healthcare space, including those related to environmental health, health and wellness, and the understanding and application of new technologies.

“There will be professions in the future that currently don’t exist,” she said. “Team-based care will also continue to change and evolve. There’s so much in wellness and prevention, and in the treatment of disease, that it’s too much for any single person. We’re looking to a future where clinical practice catches up with graduate healthcare education and interprofessional teams become the norm. The leadership of the team should depend on what’s best for the patient. Over time, we will see professional boundaries continue to fade.”

Dr. Feinberg said healthcare teams should be more patient-centered than clinician-centered.

“Who should be leading teams?” he asked. “I’ve worked with so many teams and brilliant people with a lot of initials after their name. The ones that are most effective do their best to see through the eyes of the patient, the family and the community.”

Dr. Rheault sees a need for healthcare professionals who possess attitudes and behaviors that facilitate collaboration and who are open to upskilling to fill gaps in care and advance in their roles.

What the Future Needs Now

“We need to recruit students who find fulfillment in continuous learning and adaptation. At the heart of best practice is a clinician who is a lifelong learner,” Dr. Rheault added. “They need the skill to read and understand research because things will be changing quickly. There has always been a lag between scientific discovery in clinical care and when it’s adopted into the clinic. But that time is decreasing, which is good. That’s what we want.”

“We need to recruit students who find fulfillment in continuous learning and adaptation. At the heart of best practice is a clinician who is a lifelong learner.”

Healthcare students, professionals and people who aspire to join them will need new kinds of support to prepare and sustain them as democratizing forces continue to make information and knowledge and care more accessible.

“We need systems, employers, governments and community partners to support our graduates and providers, and to encourage more people to pursue the health professions,” Dr. Parsley said.

Improved access to healthcare education, which would help close the health equity gap, is another area ripe for innovation.

Simulation training at the RFU campus and Huntley centers includes work with both manikins and standardized patients.

“How we solve those problems is a huge issue that higher ed needs to figure out,” Dr. Carlson said. “Can we make it simpler to launch a new residency program to meet current healthcare demands? How can we cultivate more high-quality rotation sites for students, which in turn dictates the number of students we can admit? Why are some students so burdened and stressed? Part of that may be the demands and pressures we put on them to gain admission. For example, do we need more years of chemistry or do you really need better communicators and should we spend time helping learners hone those skills?”

Dr. Carlson predicts that new, more equitable models of healthcare education and care delivery will emerge from the current period of disruption.

“Generative AI — artificial intelligence that is capable of learning and developing novel concepts — is still guided, right now, by people,” he said. “We override it with our own judgment. But it’s accelerating. We can either be proactive and learn how it can help our patients or reactive when our patients bring it to our attention.

“We need to see a continued emphasis on being human with technology,” Dr. Carlson added. “We need adaptability, flexibility and curiosity to thrive in this time of rapid change.” 

Judy Masterson is a staff writer with RFU’s Division of Marketing and Brand Management.

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