Mr. Saleh says using PIVOT definitely increased his interest in rheumatology. “The case-based nature of the application, which unfolded every day like a puzzle and rewarded you for the time that you put into learning more about each sign and symptom, was academically scintillating and one of the most fun modules I had the chance to use in my medical education.”
Building Excellent Educators
Dr. Dall’Era says she is incredibly thankful for her Foundation funding, which has not only allowed her to build PIVOT, but also granted her opportunities to improve her skills as an educator. After receiving the Foundation’s Clinician Scholar Educator Award, she was accepted into UCSF’s rigorous Teaching Scholars Program, which teaches educators about curricular development and educational theory and methodology. She believes the Foundation grant was a key component of her acceptance into the program and is applying her expanding knowledge to PIVOT and her career as a professor.
“It is our responsibility to teach the next generation of doctors, who will take care of rheumatology patients and do research to find the underlying causes of these diseases,” Dr. Dall’Era says. “The Foundation allows people like me to work in the academic environment. The Foundation believed in me, and as a result, I have been able to pursue additional formal training in education, which I am applying to the development of this novel educational app.”
A Platform for the Future
After testing PIVOT in UCSF’s second-year medical school curriculum, Dr. Dall’Era now has plans to expand the use of PIVOT to UCSF’s School of Pharmacy. The expanded program will allow medical and pharmacy students to work together in a team setting on a patient case. Dr. Dall’Era says that this is just one of the ways that PIVOT can be modified to train future rheumatology healthcare professionals from various levels and specialties.
“A lot of this work is building a platform for the future. This app can be scaled up, and we can create cases that end in different diagnoses,” says Dr. Dall’Era. “In the end, we hope to produce better doctors who are able to take the best possible care of their patients.”
