In May 2009, the Board of Trustees approved plans for the School of Medicine to construct a new Learning Center at the center of Duke’s medical campus. The Learning Center will be the first large-scale medical education building constructed at Duke since the Davison building in 1930. The facility will allow medical students to engage in the latest hands-on training and medical education techniques, which tend to emphasize simulated exercises more so than working on actual patients. The Duke Endowment pledged $35 million to fund the facility in April 2008, and the medical school hopes to raise an additional $15 million through a capital campaign it began last Fall. Dr. Edward Buckley, vice dean for medical education, spoke with The Chronicle’s Alejandro Bolívar about plans for the new facility and how it will improve medical education and training at Duke.
The Chronicle: What is the purpose of the building?
Edward Buckley: The building is still in planning stages but it’s coming along. Unlike an office building or a lab building, it’s meeting a lot of different needs for a lot of different people. It’s an education space, serving student life [and an] advisory function for students and staff, office space, [and there will be] one whole floor for simulation and patient encounter. A lot of different groups have a stake in what the building looks like. The planning stage is dealing with all this.
TC: Give us an overview.
EB: It is scheduled to have five floors. The first floor will have a large multi-use media room that can be broken down like a hotel ballroom. When we do our inter-professional functions, we’ll have a facility that will allow us to do this; we do not have places for this now. The second story will house major lecture hall areas. The third floor is to have training labs and small group rooms. The fourth floor will have the student life area and advisory folks to have synergy between students and support staff. The fifth floor is simulation and patient interaction.
TC: Where will the building be located?
EB: Next to the [medical] school library at the absolute epicenter for where the medical school will be 10 years from now, right smack in the center of the action, just like the Davison building was when the medical school was founded. The building will be contiguous with the library, which we anticipate utilizing as part of the student program with study space and access to materials.
TC: How does this new project reflect changes in medical education?
EB: Medical curriculum will be moving toward team-based learning, as opposed to lecture-based. You may have a physician overseeing your care, but you’ll have others involved. We need to train individuals both as a leader of a team and as a member of the team. It’s a very dynamic, very engaging type of educational activity. We don’t really have a facility that allows us to do it. The [Duke University-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School] is already using this.
TC: How does the building’s construction position Duke’s School of Medicine in relation to other medical schools of the same caliber?
EB: It put us back in the race. If you look at top ten medical schools in the country, we are the only one that doesn’t have a significant up-to-date medical building. Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and [Washington University in St. Louis] all have very nice medical spaces. It’s something we desperately need. The Duke Endowment recognized this need.
TC: Has the recession impacted the project in any way?
EB: The $35 million pledge from the Endowment is still in place, though it is not going to cover the entire cost. I am not sure how much [this building] is going to cost, probably between $40-50 million.
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