We are pleased to announce that as of this summer, Darshan Mehta, MD, MPH, Osher Education Director and Medical Director at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine (BHI), will be leading the second cohort of first year medical and dental students in Harvard Medical School’s newly established Mind-Body and Resiliency Course.
In the fall of 2018, Dr. Mehta led the roll-out of the first HMS Mind-Body and Resiliency Course, delivered to all 160 1st year medical and dental school students. The newly matriculated students participated in the program as part of their coursework in Professional Development, under the direction of Dr. Fidencio Saldana, Dean of Students at Harvard Medical School. The first year’s curriculum, taught by eight Harvard Medical School faculty members comes to a close in August 2019.
Entitled “Building Resiliency, Depth, and Grit in Medicine” (aka BRDG) the curriculum was largely experiential in nature and based upon components of the SMART (Stress Management and Resiliency Training) program developed by Elyse Park, Peg Baim and Lelsee Kagan at BHI-MGH. It comprised a 12-hour longitudinal curriculum delivered in six two-hour sessions or all HMS students based in the Pathways curriculum.
With approved funding for Year 2, and incorporating student and faculty experience from the pilot year, the second cohort of 1st year students will pursue a modified course curriculum starting August 2019. This year’s program will include more flipped-class room learning, and will favor deeper immersions into specific modalities over broader exposure to a range of available modalities.