SAN ANTONIO – The U.T. Health Science Center at San Antonio's 's undergraduate program of the School of Medicine now carries the status of accreditation with probation by a national accreditation group.
Administrators said the medical school is still accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, but they must make some changes to have the probationary status lifted.
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The L.C.M.E. made a site visit to the school last January, something they do every eight years. School officials said after that visit they were placed on probation because they still hadn't adequately addressed some issues that were brought up during the last visit in 2003.
"It was a little bit of a surprise that hey chose to have such a public sanction but we will deal with it," said Dr. Francisco Gonzalez-Scarano, the dean of the medical school.
Gonzalez-Scarano said as the dean of the medical school he's already addressing the deficiencies that were pointed out by the L.C.M.E.
Of the 10 problems, he said there were three main issues.
The first is the way the medical students are being taught is a bit outdated. The curriculum has been too focused on lectures for first and second year students when it should be more focused on self-learning and developing problem solving skills.
The second issue was a lack of centralized management of the curriculum.
Finally, there was a lack of alignment between the basic sciences and the medical school which were operating separately. Gonzalez-Scarano said they have since been merged.
The school pointed out that none of the deficiencies had anything to do with the quality of physicians they are graduating. In fact, the school said it's students are performing extremely well on national licensing exams and other benchmarks.
Gonzalez-Scarano said the school was slow to fix these issues in the past but they will be addressed quickly. He expects to have the new curriculum in place for the next class of medical students which will start next July.
The school hopes it's efforts will satisfy the accreditation group and lead to the probationary status being lifted soon.
"The L.C.M.E. and us have the same goal which is to improve medical education, make the schools better and to have a curriculum that trains physicians to be the best they can be," Gonzalez-Scarano said.