Document Type
Original Report
Disciplines
Curriculum and Instruction | Higher Education | Interprofessional Education | Medicine and Health Sciences
Abstract
Introduction
Despite high costs of education, extended lengths of training, and rapidly increasing student debt, personal finance is an often-overlooked topic within professional school curricula. Due to the combination of high debt burden and poor financial literacy, professional students report low confidence and high stress regarding their personal finances. While some medical schools have begun to integrate financial education into their formal training, others provide little to no resources to combat this growing issue.
Methods
To address this gap and provide financial education opportunities, the Financial Development Club (FDC) was founded by students at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The FDC aimed to fill gaps in financial knowledge through four, one-hour seminars on topics identified by students as being particularly relevant. Following implementation of this seminar series, surveys assessing student attitudes towards the presented financial topics were distributed to all students on campus, and results were stratified by attendance and non-attendance at the seminars.
Results
Students who attended the seminars rated themselves as significantly more comfortable with all four financial topics (e.g. debt management, budgeting, investing, and retirement) compared to their peers who did not attend (p<0.05).
Conclusions
These findings demonstrate the efficacy of a small scale, student-run initiative to increase financial literacy on a single campus. Not only are these results a promising indication of the utility of a single club, they also offer a scaffold on which to build a formal personal and health care finance curriculum.
DOI
10.32873/unmc.dc.gmerj.2.2.003
Keywords
Personal finance, medical education, interprofessional education, debt management, financial planning, educational curriculum
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Payne, J., Haller, S., Flores, L. E., Baxter, J., Payton, W., , Nelson, K. Personal Finance Skills Among Health Professionals: Piloting A Student-Led Finance Curriculum And A Review Of The Current Landscape. Graduate Medical Education Research Journal. 2020 Dec 09; 2(2).
https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/gmerj/vol2/iss2/3
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Higher Education Commons, Interprofessional Education Commons
