Susan Skochelak Moves from SMPH to AMA

Madison, Wisconsin — For Susan Skochelak, MD, MPH, a passion to become a physician quickly evolved into a lifelong mission to enhance the training of medical students. Skochelak's drive-characterized by 23 years of success in increasingly influential roles at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH)-stands to broaden in scope this spring when she becomes the vice president for medical education at the American Medical Association (AMA).

"I am extremely proud that one of our colleagues has been selected for this major national leadership role, where she will help shape the future of medical education nationally," says Robert Golden, MD, SMPH dean. "Dr. Skochelak is a giant in the field of medical and health education. She deserves this honor."

At the AMA, Skochelak will lead the medical education division, which plays a fundamental role in setting standards for medical education and ensuring adherence to these standards through sponsorship of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and participation in the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.

The influence of these accrediting organizations has been integral throughout Skochelak's career, during which she pioneered innovative models for community-based and interdisciplinary medical education.

Through it all, the retiring SMPH professor of family medicine and senior associate dean for academic affairs has approached her work with the idealism and youthful zest she displayed when her career began. Skochelak, for example, maintained her clinical practice throughout her SMPH tenure.

"I have always been grateful for the opportunnity to be a physician. I believe that caring for patients makes you real as an educator. I want to help students maintain the excitement of those first weeks and months of medical school," she says.

A thoughtful, humble storyteller, she reflects on her own education, which paved the way to her current vantage point.

As a medical student in the 1970s at the University of Michigan-as might happen anywhere at the time-Skochelak discovered that opportunities to gain hands-on patient care experiences were rare. One physician-shadowing elective fueled her dream of crafting community-based training that would allow students to work with patients in community-based settings from the time they entered medical school, rather than waiting until third-year clinical rotations.

"Assisting in the birth of new babies and watching abdominal surgery on a patient for the first time energized me," she says.

Skochelak's medical degree prepared her well for a family medicine residency and a preventive medicine fellowship. Subsequently, she became a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar at the University of North Carolina, where she also obtained a master of public health degree. When she joined the SMPH in 1986, she was ready to build on her ideas for bringing community and public health training into medical education.

"My first impression was that UW faculty and staff colleagues had an open door and were willing to talk about ideas and share thoughts. That remains true," she says. "This has been a wonderful place to be creative and collaborate. You don't find that at many institutions."

In the 1990s, Skochelak led the development of two significant changes in SMPH medical student education. First, before the term "primary care" came into common use, she forged relationships with internal medicine and pediatrics colleagues to establish an opportunity for medical students to work directly with outpatients at Madison and Milwaukee community clinics. Now called the Primary Care Clerkship, this was the nation's first program to teach integrated ambulatory care in community practices. It is now required of all third-year SMPH students and is offered throughout Wisconsin.

Building on the previous clinical medicine and practice courses, Skochelak instituted the four-semester Patient, Doctor and Society (PDS) course for first- and second-year students, focusing on biological, psychological and social aspects of patient care. She designed and implemented the Generalist Partners Program (GPP), which was one of the first to enlist community-based, primary care physicians to teach introductory clinical skills to students at local practice sites. Prior to implementing these programs, UW medical students learned clinical medicine almost exclusively in inpatient experiences until they enrolled in the fourth-year Preceptorship Program.

"The PDS and GPP programs also moved clinical training into years one and two, so medical students would feel the excitement of what it means to be a physician from the beginning of medical school," she notes.
The GPP and the required third-year core curriculum were developed with funding from two prestigious national medical education grants: the Interdisciplinary Generalist Curriculum Project and the Undergraduate Medical Education for the 21st Century. The SMPH is one of only two medical schools to receive both grant awards, which provide funding to develop enhanced curricula in ethics, professionalism, intercultural communications, practice management and health-care systems.

Skochelak quickly points out these accomplishments have been team efforts.
"One of the things I value most is the camaraderie and collaboration among my colleagues," she says. "None of this has been done by just one person."

Continues Skochelak: "Looking back and ahead, there are so many resources and opportunities I've been afforded to really make a difference. That was my goal when I came to Wisconsin-to make a difference and change medical student education."

Raised in rural Michigan and the first in her family to become a physician, Skochelak is married to physician-researcher Michael F. Fleming, MD, MPH, an SMPH professor of family medicine. Their youngest daughter is a second-year medical student.

"I always hoped she would choose to attend medical school," says Skochelak, who says she sometimes thought having two physician parents might scare her daughter away from the profession.
Skochelak looks forward to her new role with the AMA.

"I now have the opportunity to move from affecting one school to a position in which I will be able to affect multiple schools and more physicians," she says. "I will be part of the group that sets direction for where medical education needs to go in the future."