Development and Implementation of Health Systems Science Education in the Clinical Learning Environment

Health systems science is a new medical educational field added to the traditional medical education curricula of basic and clinical sciences. Health systems science emphasizes a more comprehensive approach utilizing systems thinking to care for patients, including interactions between multiple healthcare systems. In this review, I explore how health systems science education can be applied when medical instructors teach students in clinical clerkships through representative case studies. This study first looks at examples of health systems science education in clinical clerkship in the United States and suggests how to develop the curriculum of health systems science for clinical learning environments in Korea by combining Kotter’s 8-step change management model and Kern’s 6-step curriculum development model. Finally, based on practical examples from actual clinical practice education situations, suggestions are made regarding how to develop the entire educational program of a medical school from the stage of applying health systems science at the individual level to clinical practice education.