Are we going in the right direction? A survey of the undergraduate medical education in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom from a general practice perspective

Abstract

This study looks at the changing patterns of medical education in 45 m edical schools in Canada, Australia and the U nited K ingdom. It exam ines the extent to which the underg raduate curricula in the above three countries have changed, and the direction of that change. It looks at the teaching and assessm ent methods used, and the development of teacher training. F inally it gathers innovative teaching ideas from the various participating fam ily m edicine departm ents.The results show, that in response to changing patterns of health and social trends, m edical education is g radually moving to a m ore lear ner-centred, com m unity-orientated form at.There is a m ove towards problem-and system-based teaching, horizontal and vertical integ ration in m any new curricula. G eneral practice is gaining a higher pro® le in underg raduate teaching, but it is often still under-resourced. M any of the fam ily m edicine departm ents provide high quality faculty training and stim ulating program s for students, based in the com munity.

Pros and cons of vertical integration between clinical medicine and basic science within a problem-based undergraduate medical curriculum: examples and experiences from Linköping, Sweden

“…Full appreciation of vertical integration may also require clinical experience combined with insight into PBL. Vertical integration has been used to improve education within certain 'traditional' subjects such as anatomy (Percac & Goodenough, 1998;Drake, 1999), neuroanatomy (Yu et al, 2000), or pharmacology (Sivam et al, 1995) as well as subjects of a more general character, like general practice and public health (Foldevi et al, 1994;Nierenberg, 1998;Elliot, 1999;Stone, 2000).…”

“…Norman & Schmidt (1992) stated that PBL students are more able to integrate basic science knowledge into the solution of clinical problems than students from more traditional programmes. To further stimulate this ability, many innovative undergraduate medical schools have introduced clinical medicine from the rst years of the curriculum, and emphasized basic science within the later, mainly clinical parts of the curriculum (Geffen et al, 1991;Nierenberg, 1998;Schmidt, 1998;Elliot, 1999;Blue et al, 2000;Harden et al, 2000). Basic sciences are thereby integrated with clinical subjects--so-called vertical integration ( Figure 1) (Lie, 1995).…”

The Anxieties of Male and Female Medical Students on Commencing Clinical Studies: The Role of Gender

“…However, the lack of correlation between examination performance and stress levels argues against this (Tooth et al, 1989) and suggests that such stress is unlikely to be of educational benefit (Moss et al, 1987). Whether the recent international changes in the medical curriculum (Elliott, 1999) with increased early contact with patients, particularly in the primary care context, will help to reduce student anxieties or simply change them is not clear. Murray et al (1997) suggest that clinical skills can be learned equally well in the community as in hospitals and that such community experience may influence career choice (Murray & Modell, 1999).…”

Cystic Fibrosis in Medical Education

“…This educational model helps the student to develop the skills of using his/her knowledge in problem-solving, analyzing and synthesizing information, determining what he/she needs to learn and finding out how to access the knowledge he/she lacks. In the end, the student becomes able to synthesize and analyze information, acquires the ability of lifelong learning [6][7][8] and learns where and how to use the knowledge he/she gained [9,10]. These benefits of PBL make it increasingly more popular in the medical schools throughout the world.…”