Leadership and Education Program in Integrative Medicine (LEAPS).
Picture a class of altruistic young medical students starting their first year of school. They each applied to school with the goal of helping people. They soon discover the limitations of their medical school curriculum, with its focus on disease care, its emphasis on interventions and pharmacology, its focus on rote memorization, and its encouragement of competition with classmates. They become disillusioned and stressed. They have no time for self care. They feel trapped by having made a commitment to an educational path that will not prepare them to become the caring, empathetic doctors that they imagined they would be.
A small number of these students are now able to take action to augment their traditional medical school educations by enrolling in the LEAPS into IM program offered at Kripalu Center. Our goal is to increase that number.
The program offers a five-day intensive integrative medicine course, plus longitudinal support and follow up, to 30 North American medical students who demonstrate leadership potential. The program is taught by a collaborative team of expert medical faculty and senior Kripalu teachers. During the course, students develop an integrative medicine project for their medical schools. The curriculum immerses the students in workshops and seminars on healthful nutrition, narrative medicine, mind-body movement, traditional, alternative, and complementary medicine, functional medicine, and health care policy.
Many students develop deep connections with one another and they reconnect with the altruistic motives that led them to apply to medical school. They rediscover how good it feels to move their bodies, nourish themselves healthfully, and meditate. Supported and rejuvenated, they return to their medical schools more informed about the institutional flaws and limitations, and better prepared to maneuver through the outdated medical education system. They are thus fortified to work to become doctors who not only understand disease and interventions, but who are also are inspired to live a balanced life, practice self-care, and teach patients about enhancing their health. This program is generously supported by the Weil Foundation, Kripalu Center, the faculty who donate their time and private donors.
For more information or to apply, contact Rachael Maciasz, National Student Director, American Medical Student Association: leaps@amsa.org.
