# A clinical immersion program with broad curricular impact for biomedical engineering

> **NIH NIH R25** · UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA · 2022 · $43,200

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
 We aim to build a summer immersion program with broad curricular impact for Biomedical Engineering
(BME). The immersion program will match undergraduate BME students with third year medical students.
These “Clinical Scholars” will act as observers during the medical students' summer clinical clerkships.
Importantly, the Clinical Scholars join an established learning community of medical students in “colleges” who
progress through their studies as a cohort, and who will serve as their mentors. The Clinical Scholars will gain
a personal vantage on the problems encountered daily by clinicians, and will have the opportunity to immerse
themselves in multiple clinical fields. A holistic yet targeted admissions process will help ensure the diversity of
the Clinical Scholar cohorts. Two sets of written deliverables will be expected of every Clinical Scholar from
each clinical clerkship in which they are immersed. The first deliverables are statements of clinical problems or
unmet clinical needs, with appropriate user needs and constraints. These Clinical Needs Reports, numbering
about ten per year, will be used in new and existing BME design-build courses, broadening the impact of the
immersion experience to a much larger number of students. The second of the deliverables are instructional
case studies, targeted to BME core or elective courses. These case studies will be used by our degree
program faculty for the instruction of the entire BME student body. The case studies will be vetted by program
faculty, and will be made publically available after one semester of in-class use and iterative redesign. The
medical student mentors will have the option of joining students in the design processes, and both Scholar and
mentor will have the option of presenting the case studies in classes where they are used. Every aspect of the
program will be subject to longitudinal quantitative assessment, and will add to the knowledgebase of both
undergraduate engineering education, and also undergraduate medical education.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10385678
- **Project number:** 5R25EB023841-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
- **Principal Investigator:** WILLIAM H GUILFORD
- **Activity code:** R25 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $43,200
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-05-01 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10385678

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10385678, A clinical immersion program with broad curricular impact for biomedical engineering (5R25EB023841-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10385678. Licensed CC0.

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