Newswise ANN ARBOR, Mich. With American health care poised on the brink of its largest change in decades, 177 students started down the path to becoming doctors this month at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Chosen from nearly 5,400 applicants, and coming from 26 states, they all have a history of strong academic achievements. They now all have short white coats and new stethoscopes, given to them by alumni in the White Coat ceremony on their first day of medical school, an event steeped in tradition and symbolism.

But they also share something else: the potential to be leaders of the medical profession and health care community.

Through a new partnership with U-Ms Stephen M. Ross School of Business, all the new medical students will receive training that goes beyond anatomy, physiology and other traditional subjects. They will learn how to work with others to lead change, helping set them on a course that will continue through their careers.

U-M is the first medical school to give all its students this kind of training, which will prepare them to be the impactful change agents that American health care will need in the coming decades.

For more than 160 years, our school has graduated some of the highest-achieving physicians in the country, and many of our alumni have gone on to lead large practices and hospitals, medical schools, companies, professional societies, government agencies and major research initiatives, says Rajesh Mangrulkar, M.D., associate dean for medical student education at the U-M Medical School. But this new training, which will continue throughout their four years, will equip our students with the specific leadership skills that will help them achieve even more.

The new students kicked off their leadership training in a couple of unusual and lighthearted ways.

First, they began to understand their individual leadership tendencies, participating in a workshop on Competing Values by Jeff DeGraff, a clinical professor at the Ross School of Business. Then, the students were assigned into one of four teams, and engaged in a MedChef cooking contest, a competition to prepare meals (along with a marketing and communication strategy) that were then judged by faculty and alumni.

They may have looked like a couple of fun orientation-week events, but they were specifically designed to test the medical students organizational, leadership and management skills.

Erin McKean, M.D., who is helping direct the Leadership Initiative, says, In the first year, well be focusing on building productive teams,what it means to be a team member and respecting the skills and values that other people bring to the table. In phase two, well go on to health care systems, including health policy, economics and finance. In the last phase, students will be planning and executing change, which is something that health leaders do every day. McKean is a clinical assistant professor of otolaryngology and is just about to graduate with her MBA from Ross.

More here:

Paging Dr. Tomorrow: U-M Medical Students Get Business Training