With the new curriculum (Medicine 2015) entering into full bloom, we may notice some pain during this transition.
This week last year’s “greenhorns” (read: first-year medical students who had stayed two days at the department during spring term), started to bloom, now with orange name-tags. During this stay their main goal was to follow at least two patients through the treatment chain; from referral from primary care throughout their examinations /treatment during hospital-stay, which personnel were involved and how was the collaboration between primary and secondary health-care? These students have been present in their respective departments throughout four days and this time possibly in addition to older students who by the “old” curriculum are supposed to learn the explicit technical diagnostics and procedures taught in their specific semester. We all need to keep track of which of these students could / should attend what.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to providing all categories of students with good learning opportunities!
More changes: The Skills Centre (Ferdighetssenteret) which has been spread at three different locations in Sentralblokken is almost finalized, now located at the 1st floor of BBB. This centre will be a great venue for our students to practice skill training; from blood pressure measurement and bladder catheterization, via cardiopulmonary resuscitation to complex emergency courses. We are upgrading the equipment and now it is the responsibility of the different semester boards to plan the teaching that should be implemented at the Skills Centre.
The centre is also designed to accommodate OSCE examination (Objective Structured Clinical Exam), where students are tested in practical skills (procedures or patient communication). Such examination takes place at the end of the third and sixth year of their medical study. All the practice students receive at different departments will prepare them for these exams!
Integrated education, where basic medicine and specific medical specialty teachers contribute together will be an exciting challenge in the new curriculum. TBL (team based learning) is a student activating teaching method which among others will be demonstrated during the Teaching Day 2016 on 12th of October. There, we also will be given the opportunity to learn how to develop proper multiple choice questions (MCQs) aiming to test the students’ theoretical knowledge in an appropriate manner.
All teachers are welcomed to attend the Teaching Day 12.10! A final reminder: we all want to meet tidy, clean classrooms, especially when we bring patients along. We will (via the faculty study section) remind the students of their responsibility to tidy up after lectures. (Empty coffee mugs or water bottles should be removed and drinking is never a student activity when a patient is present, whether in the auditorium or consulting rooms). Maybe we need to define a specific student from each class as the “busboy”? But we as lecturers should aid by removing excess teaching materials such as surplus handouts when we leave the auditorium or classroom.
And please; do not use a permanent marker on anything else than whiteboards, they cannot be removed from projector screens…
