Rufus M. Clarke

The approaches to learning of students in a traditional and in an innovative problem‐based medical school

Summary. The way in which students approach their learning is dependent on a variety of factors including the characteristics of the departments and teaching to which they are exposed. These factors appear to influence whether the students adopt a surface, deep or strategic approach.

Medical Education with a Difference

Abstract This paper discusses the new five‐year undergraduate medical course at the University of Newcastle in Australia. Extensive examples are included to illustrate the analytical approach which has led from the specification of programme objectives to the design of a course with complete integration of the basic and clinical sciences from the beginning to the end of the course. Lectures are replaced by individual and small group learning centred around a carefully designed sequence of medical problems. Projects in the community are designed to lead to the attainment of specified competences in relation to problems of groups in the population. In addition, educational experiences in interviewing, physical examination, special investigation and therapeutic intervention techniques, as well as competence in design‐measurement‐analysis‐reporting in medical practice and research are integrated with problem‐based learning. Students see patients in hospitals and in the community from the beginning of the cour...

THE EVOLUTION AND IMPACT OF PROGRAMME EVALUATION IN A NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL

ABSTRACT While the purpose, theory and method of evaluation of educational programmes are well‐documented, there is little published evidence on the actual evaluation of higher professional educational programmes and their outcomes. This paper outlines the background and development of programme evaluation in a new institution of higher professional education. It outlines current programme monitoring activities and their effects, and identifies the urgent and feasible tasks to be undertaken in the methodologically difficult and politically sensitive area of outcome evaluation.

Syndicate methods: two styles compared

A comparison is made between two styles of syndicate work. In the first, referred to as ‘unstructured’ (U), groups range in size from four to six students. In the second, referred to as ‘formal’ (F), groups are eight to ten in size and tend to adopt a formal chairman-secretary structure. This latter type is here illustrated by one of the authors from his experience in a Medical School, where the tasks presented to the students are complex ‘problem boxes’ requiring many man-hours from different departments for their creation. The analysis of the U type is based on the second authors experience in an American university and an English polytechnic.The areas examined are, first, the size and the composition of the groups; second the tutors role; third, the development of higher order cognitive skills in the students; and fourth the management of research in this field. Questions are raised particularly in relation to the consolidation of syndicate work, to ensure command of the basic material; to the change of role required of both teachers and students; to the influence of the institutional culture on the work; to the adaptation of assessment techniques to measure development in the higher order skills; and to the possibility that investigation needs to be carried out on actual courses by teachers, students and researchers in collaboration.

Health orientation in medical education, Australia

Abstract A new medical school has the opportunity to examine afresh some of the conceptual bases of medical education, but for a variety of reasons this opportunity is all too frequently ignored. This paper describes a new school in Newcastle, Australia, where a number of circumstances made it desirable and possible to develop an education program which incorporated an appropriate emphasis on prevention, both in individual and population terms. Epidemiology, demography, and medical sociology are seen as the fundamental disciplines required to underpin such an approach. First, the technique is described by which concepts of prevention are incorporated into that strand of the curriculum which comprises a problem-solving approach to the complaints of individual patients; there follows a description of strategies to involve students in the health problems of groups, and examples of some projects which are planned and implemented by students at different stages of this program. Students are expected, by the time of graduation, to have learned how to integrate the individual and group perspectives in their approach to preventive medicine.

Organizing an Institution to Deliver Educational Programmes Designed to Achieve Capability

Abstract This paper reviews the educational implications of capability, and examines the extent to which traditional academic organizational structures frustrate the achievement of those educational goals. The progress of one institutions attempts to develop a more appropriate organizational structure for undergraduate medical education is described, and a subjective evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses is presented.

The Anatomy of the Peritoneum

The author describes two educational strategies for helping students to understand the complex three-dimensional structure of the peritoneal cavity and the developmental changes by which that structure arises. The first strategy consists of a series of conducted circular tours round the peritoneal lining of the postnatal abdomen. The second is a demonstration of the developmental history of the placing of the gut and its peritoneum using a model.