IJUP08 - Universidade do Porto

Educational Sciences and Medical Education: An internship in
FCM-UNL Department of Medical Education
R. Encarnação 1
1 Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal.
This paper describes a project developed during a curricular internship (integrated into the
last year of the basic degree in Educational Sciences, held by FPCEUP - Faculty of
Psychology and Educational Sciences of Porto University) which took place in the
Department of Medical Education (DEM) of the New University of Lisbon’s (NUL)
Faculty of Medical Sciences (FMSc). This pre-graduate internship was developed with the
support of a grant derived from the POCI2010 programme, from January to June 2006,
under the supervision of Professors Rui Trindade (remotely, at FPCEUP) and Patrícia
Rosado Pinto (locally, at DEM). We will focus on ways in which this work can be
characterized as a potential field of action for an Educational Sciences professional, in a
Higher Education-specific context like Medical Education.
One of the main objectives of this internship was to gain a deeper understanding of the
Department’s body of work and its role within the Faculty of Medical Sciences, taking into
account the different topics studied during our pre-graduate years, specifically focusing on
if and how the DEM’s role could be characterized as Educational Assessment and
Mediation. We believe that the DEM can be seen as a point upon which the Educational
and Medical Sciences can converge, in a cross-fertilization, multi-focal and reflexive
approach.
A full-immersion approach was outlined in order to accomplish these objectives, having
been stated since the initial project that the intern’s role would be that of a normal element
of the DEM, as a way to experience first-hand how the Department functioned and worked.
Weekly activity reports were instated as mandatory, in order to collect information and
thoughts on the intern’s, and the Department’s activities and characteristics.
We will present the work developed at the Department of Medical Education during the
internship, analyzing its activity in light of the Educational Sciences’ rationale of
intervention in education.
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