Med 5 Teaching: New curriculum

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Med 5 Teaching New curriculum

• Department of Anaesthaesia and Intensive Care
• Department of Clinical Oncology
• Department of Diagnostic Radiology Organ
  Imaging
• Department of Medicine and Therapeutics
• Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology
• Department of Surgery
• Accident and Emergency Medicine Unit

2
New curriculum Year 5

• 10 week modules. 4 per year. 40 weeks total
• 2 each for Medical and Surgical Streams
• 20 weeks for each stream
• Medicine Medicine, Oncology, ICU and
  Radiology.
• Surgery Surgery, ENT, Eye, Anaesthesia,
  Orthopaedics and Radiology

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New curriculum structure of year 5
SSM Self-selected Module
2 week gap between 2nd and 3rd modules
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Students Comments

• The final years schedule is too tight
• 40 weeks in total
• Too many subjects to cover
• Medicine stream clinical oncology, acute care
  medicine (AED ICU), radiology plus all medical
  specialties
• Surgery stream anesthesia, ophthalmology, ENT,
  orthopedics
• No time to play the role of assistant intern

5
Students Comments

• Students have forgotten what they have learnt
  (clinical skills) in medicine and surgery in Year
  3
• SSM is a waste of time!

6
Teachers Comments

• When they came to year 5, they tend to be
  deficient in clinical skills as well as basic
  scientific knowledge (as compared to those
  students in the old curriculum)
• For history taking, students are able to ask a
  lot of questions following some kind of
  protocols, but their ability to integrate the
  history and the clinical reasoning is weak
• For physical examination, students are able to
  perform step-by-step for organ systems but their
  ability to pick up physical signs and correlate
  the findings is weak

7
Teachers Comments

• Students are still asking for tutorials (and some
  teachers like tutorials too may affect their
  ratings.)
• Too much preference for didactic teaching and
  book learning
• Some gaps in knowledge (e.g. interpreting ECG,
  management of coma)
• Students expected to learn about management but
  too much time has to be spent on the history and
  examination

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Where are they?
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SWOT in Year 5

• Strength
• Cluster clinical teams and other teaching
  hospitals are providing good clinical materials
  and patients for our students good feedback
  about ward attachments in general
• Highly committed clinical teachers
• The introduction of 2 weeks of intensive
  surgery course at the start week of each
  surgical attachment is considered very useful
• Acute medicine course (ICU) receiving very good
  feed back at present run at 1st week of one
  medical attachment

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ICU course is very well received
Very

• Basic Assessment and Support of Critically Ill
  patients for Medical Students

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SWOT in Year 5

• Weakness
• Too many specialties where some teachers
  commented that their levels are obviously
  post-graduate
• Spending 2 weeks on intensive surgery course
  means 2 weeks of clinical rotations (real
  patients encounters) are taken away
• When med 5 students are attached to clinical
  teams, they do not really function as assistant
  interns or part of the team
• Students increasingly absent themselves from
  clinical attachments in the last module (in
  library)

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SWOT in Year 5

• Opportunities (modification)
• Clinical rotations may need to be repackagde so
  that less time is spent in rotating through
  surgical sub-specialties of post-graduate level
  (need modifications of teaching content as well)
• Need to enhance as well as encourage med 5
  students to participate assistant interns
  during ward attachments
• Special sessions may need to provide for clinical
  skills training in preparing the students for
  their internship
• Need to add learning and teaching outcomes for
  surgical rotations so that students can be clear
  about what they should do when they come to a
  clinical team

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SSM in Year 5
Scrapped in 2006/7
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New Possibilities
4 additional Weeks Of Pre-year
5 Brush-up On Clinical Skills
ICU Course
ICU course introduced in 2005/6 at week 1 of
medical module
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Final comment

• Are we expecting too much of the new curriculum?
• Are we expecting too much of the skills of the
  students at entry to year 5?
• The original idea of the new curriculum was that
  students would be ready by year 5 to take on ward
  attachments as pre-interns. This goal is not
  being met by most (although not all) students but
  is it a realistic goal?