University of Utah’s medical students of the future will spend more time with hands-on learning that starts earlier and is more immersive than what any of the school’s previous medical students experienced. Or, for that matter, most students at any U.S. medical school.
That future starts now, with the official opening of the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine on the university’s upper campus, which is largely focused on health education and care. The school’s ribbon-cutting Wednesday is expected to draw donors, state and local officials, students and others to celebrate a facility that’s been in the works for years.
University of Utah Health runs Utah’s only academic medical center and trains approximately two-thirds of the state’s physicians, according to university officials, who said in press material that “its clinical and educational reach extends throughout the Mountain West, including referral areas covering nearly 10% of the continental United States.”
Dr. Bob Carter, a practicing neurosurgeon and executive vice president for health sciences over the entire health system, told Deseret News that the new medical school’s opening comes at a time when medical education is in transition to a new way of teaching and learning about healing and providing care…