AMEE Berlin 2002 Programme

7C2 The University of Rochester’s
Double Helix Curriculum
Elaine F Dannefer
University of Rochester Medical Center, 601 Elmwood Avenue,
Box 601, Rochester NY 14642, USA
Beginning in 1999, a fourth-year, interdisciplinary
curriculum has been phased in at the University of
Rochester. Called the Double Helix Curriculum, this
curriculum integrates basic science and clinical
medicine throughout the four years of undergraduate
education with the clinical strand comprising
approximately 30 of curricular time in years one and
two and 70% in years three and four, with the basic
science strand representing the converse. An 18-month
ambulatory clerkship in years 1 and 2 is followed by
inpatient clerkships and electives. Students begin their
education with a course that provides the foundation
for the practice of evidence based medicine and
includes biostatistics, epidemiology and skills related
to searching and evaluating the scientific literature.
Two-week long comprehensive assessments at the end
of years 2 and 3 provide feedback for students as well
as a means of assessing the curriculum.
7C3 Academic administration and
mixed programmes
S Sharma Khanal* and S Koirala
B P Koirala Institute, Dharan, NEPAL
The B.P. Koirala Institute is a Health Sciences
University in Nepal with undergraduate courses in
medicine, nursing, dentistry and allied health sciences
plus postgraduate courses to PhD level. This poses an
overwhelming challenge for maintaining harmonious
and positive administrative approaches. It becomes
further intensified as trained manpower is scarce in
Nepal and the potential danger of manpower leaving
the Institute has led to new approaches to retain
teachers. These will be presented in the poster.
7C4 Learning responsibly -
implementing written guidelines for
medical students
Richard Phillips*, Ann Wylie and Anne Stephenson
Department of General Practice and Primary Care, Guy’s King’s
and St Thomas’ Medical School, King’s College London, Weston
Education Centre, Cutcombe Road, London SE5 9RJ, UK
Contemporary medical undergraduate curricula include
early patient contact in community settings. Whilst
there may be concurrent teaching in ethics, the focus
of this may be on the behaviour of a qualified doctor;
what of the students’ responsibilities to patients and
each other? As a department, we have 1,800 students
placed in hundreds of community settings during the
year, and we are concerned about student awareness of
their current ethical responsibilities. We prepared
written guidelines for students about responsible
learning. Questionnaire follow-up in 1999-2000
showed only 121 of 263 students definitely had read
the booklet (of these 121, the majority found it helpful),
and 20% said they had lost it altogether. For 2000-2001
modifications were made in delivery and highlighting
Wednesday 5 September
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the material, and the questionnaire repeated. This
presentation reports on more detailed results of both
questionnaires and will discuss the modifications and
the implications.
7C5 HEICUMED - a novel approach to
student medical education at the
Medical Faculty of the University of
Heidelberg, Germany
Hubert J Bardenheuer* on behalf of the HEICUMED
Group
Medical Faculty, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld
346, 69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Heidelberg Medical Faculty developed “HEICUMED“,
in which the clinical years are completely reorganized
into organ-related block courses (“modules”). Modules
are taught multiple times during the year in small
student groups. A multidisciplinary planning group
redesigned the original plan and combined the modules
into interdisciplinary “clusters”, such as surgery and
medicine. Strong connections between the various
disciplines are guaranteed by lectures and cases related
to leading symptoms. Subjects like pathology,
radiology, clinical laboratory, etc are all integrated into
the topics of the week and taught alongside. This novel
approach of student education is directed to
significantly improve:
• students’ clinical and practical instructions and
keeping training of medical facts at a high level;
• the personal interactions with faculty members;
• case-related problems in which all pieces of
knowledge in clinical medicine have to be
connected; and
• teamwork by encouraging studying in groups and
establishing PBL group learning.
7C6 Enhancing curriculum renewal
through a “clinical presentation”
approach to undergraduate medical
education
Nehad El-Sawi
University of Health Sciences, 1750 Independence Avenue,
Kansas City, MO 64106, USA
UHSCOM has revised its ‘discipline based’ curriculum
and adopted the ‘integrative clinical presentation
curriculum’ modelled, in part, after the Calgary
curriculum. The discipline-based curriculum
emphasized traditional basic sciences but lacked
integration throughout disciplines, and across the four
years. The integrative Clinical Presentation curriculum
combined a strong knowledge base of basic and clinical
sciences where clinical instruction guides basic science
learning. Each clinical presentation began with a
decision tree review, demonstration of its use, and a
series of lectures covering the related basic and clinical
sciences, ending with opportunities to practice
diagnostic reasoning. The integration of subject matter
created a coherent foundation for students` subsequent
efforts at organizing the relationships between various
basic and clinical science concepts.