Students enrolled in the medical degree programme who are stationed at Førde hospital, will receive interdisciplinary training as part of the practical teaching plan for 3^rd internal medicine semester. The students are thrilled about having tasks with a great degree of responsibility involved and receiving feedback on their performance, as well as having the opportunity to work and learn interdisciplinary with nursing students. Skills obtained through interdisciplinary cooperation with other groups of health workers are already included in the learning outcomes that our students should achieve, but the training is not very well organized. Of course it is also unreasonable that similar learning programs are not offered students stationed at Haugesund or Stavanger hospitals. Professor Anders Bærheim at Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care has now taken the initiative of establishing Interdisciplinary Training as a mandatory part of the work placement in internal medicine and surgical disciplines. The project will be developed in collaboration with the UiB coordinators for teaching at Haugesund and Stavanger hospitals, as well as the University Colleges of Stord/Haugesund and Stavanger, both of which offer nursing degrees, all based on the Førde model. The project will also be an important contribution in order for K2 to achieve its strategic goal of strengthening the regional teaching Collaboration.

On an annual basis Department of Clinical Science has to report to the Faculty about what has been done to favour quality of the doctoral education and training for our 140-145 active PhD trainees. For 2013 we reported that the mandatory part of the UiB fellowships had to be checked up, on promotion of the research schools, to establish new research training courses and an increased focus on career planning and mobility of our candidates.     

Has this been followed up? Yes, to a major extent. The routines for handling the mandatory part (25%) of the UiB fellowships have been better organized. Regarding the research schools the new seminar series “Perspectives in translational medicine” has become a success with challenging and appealing lectures in the Bergen Postgraduate School of Clinical Medicine Research. And the Bergen Research School of Inflammation has established new courses (flowcytometry) and seen an increase in attendance at their immunology courses.

For the future it will also be a priority for both the PhD candidates and with the help from supervisors to plan the coming careers as well as increase the mobility e.g. visits with other groups/laboratories. Some of our candidates have got really interesting international visits, but this could have been much more implemented. It should also be emphasised that the research group leaders are encouraged to have meetings with the PhD candidates annually e.g. “medarbeidersamtaler” to pick up problems, misunderstandings etc. and not only the regular progress reports.

There has been no failure of PhD theses at Department of Clinical Science in 2014; a total of 23 candidates have finalized their theses with a public defence. Also the interaction between supervisors and PhD candidates has been smooth with only a few misunderstandings/problems, and these have been sorted out. So we are on the right track…….

Roland