There are 20 pages of maps, travel directions, and shuttle bus schedules in the back of the University telephone directory connecting UMDNJ from north to south Jersey. We’ve got thousands of computers, miles of telephone links, internet mailboxes, wireless capability and e-news updates to support our network of invaluable University relationships. Where would our joint efforts and the hectic modern work of the University be without these artificial links? Yet, beneath the physical surface of this web of connectivity are the real human bonds that grow great physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists, therapists, researchers, and all of our allied healthcare-givers.

You can see the intrinsic value of these human connections at NJMS in The Healthcare Foundation Center for Humanism and Medicine. Under the direction of NJMS assistant professor and transplant surgeon Dorian Wilson, MD, this Center is training students to value personal interaction. “Modern technology has distracted us,” Wilson says. “The scales of science versus the human dimension have been unbalanced with more weight going towards the scientific side.” Research has actually shown that when physicians pay attention to patients and listen properly, while respecting cultural differences and backgrounds, they learn more than tests alone can tell and outcomes are better. “These origins of humanism in medicine are right in the Hippocratic Oath.”

In our eight UMDNJ schools, innovative teaching is everywhere. Take SOM’s Problem Based Learning Curriculum (PBLC) championed by Andrew A. Pecora, DO. As assistant dean for education and faculty development with 37 years of teaching experience in the classroom and on hospital floors, Professor Pecora was frustrated. When faced with real patients, why couldn’t his students recall everything they had been taught?

Looking for a way to teach medicine and promote better retention, Pecora introduced PBLC in 2000. No lectures…no professors...just a facilitator, or “guide on the side, not a sage on the stage”…lots of self-study…and lively interaction three days a week, for two years, by six to eight students sitting at a round table, exchanging ideas, following the trail of hundreds of clinical questions, and teaching one another the human body via case histories. “No one ever cuts a session,” Pecora says. Charged to come up with differential diagnoses and learning issues, students ask the right questions, request additional data, do their own research, teach one another and are prepared to move into their clinical rotations by year three of med school. “Day after day after day, it’s just people talking, arguing, and going everywhere for answers — the internet, textbooks, journal articles — to become their own experts,” Pecora reports. “Even the most reserved students blossom into teachers and fonts of information for the group.” Pecora’s legacy looks good. So far, three graduating classes of PBLC students have scored higher than average on national licensing exams.

Connection also means valuing feedback. NJDS Clinical Professor Daniel Chertoff, DDS, class of 1961, teaches “The Way It Really Is,” a practical course on managing a dental practice. After his last lecture in this series, he always asks for a show of hands announcing, “If you think this was worthwhile, I’ll do it again next year. If not, I won’t.” Maybe it’s because Chertoff “absolutely loves dentistry,” with an enthusiasm that is clearly contagious in his classes, but one thing is certain: he’s still teaching after 43 years and his course on dental practice managment has been going strong since 1984.