ABSTRACT
The University of New Mexico School of Medicine (UNMSOM) sought to train medical students in public health concepts, knowledge, and skills as a means of improving the health of communities statewide. Faculty members from every UNMSOM department collaborated to create and integrate a public health focus into all years of the medical school curriculum. They identified key competencies and developed new courses that would synchronize students' learning public health subjects with the mainstream medical school content. New courses include: Health Equity: Principles of Public Health; Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Evidence-Based Practice; Community-Based Service Learning; and Ethics in Public Health. Students experiencing the new courses, first in pilot and then final forms, gave high quantitative ratings to all courses. Some students' qualitative comments suggest that the Public Health Certificate has had a profound transformative effect. Instituting the integrated Public Health Certificate at UNMSOM places it among the first medical schools to require all its medical students to complete medical school with public health training. The new UNMSOM Public Health Certificate courses reunite medicine and public health in a unified curriculum.
Subject(s)
Certification , Education, Medical/organization & administration , Public Health/education , Clinical Competence , Cooperative Behavior , Curriculum , Faculty, Medical/organization & administration , Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , Humans , New Mexico , Schools, Medical , Students, MedicalABSTRACT
Preeclampsia is a pregnancy-specific multisystem disorder of unknown etiology. The disorder affects approximately 5 to 7 percent of pregnancies and is a significant cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Preeclampsia is defined by the new onset of elevated blood pressure and proteinuria after 20 weeks of gestation. It is considered severe if blood pressure and proteinuria are increased substantially or symptoms of end-organ damage (including fetal growth restriction) occur. There is no single reliable, cost-effective screening test for preeclampsia, and there are no well-established measures for primary prevention. Management before the onset of labor includes close monitoring of maternal and fetal status. Management during delivery includes seizure prophylaxis with magnesium sulfate and, if necessary, medical management of hypertension. Delivery remains the ultimate treatment. Access to prenatal care, early detection of the disorder, careful monitoring, and appropriate management are crucial elements in the prevention of preeclampsia-related deaths.
