Objectives: Since 2009, the University of Cologne has been developing a longitudinal curriculum for teaching social and communicative skills to dental students (LSK-Dent) based on the recommendations of the Association for Dental Education in Europe (ADEE). As a part of this curriculum it was considered to develop a reception service in the undergraduate treatment courses of the Department of Operative Dentistry and Periodontology involving the organizational and administrative handling of the patients by the students. Students should gain an insight into everyday practice and the reception service should function as a learning environment for social und communicative competences. This article introduces the LSK-Dent project, the implementation of the reception service and presents initial evaluation results.
Methods: Patients (n=575) and students (n=53) filled out a questionnaire. Additionally, four semi-structured interviews with students were conducted.
Results: The reception service was successfully implemented and endorsed by the students. First indications suggest that the reception service was well received by students as a learning environment for social und communicative competences and viewed as an opportunity to gain an insight into everyday practice.
Conclusion: The reception service is an innovative addition to the treatment courses and an example for transforming an already existing reality in a course into a new learning environment for students. To what extent the implementation of reflexive elements can increase the subjectively perceived additional benefit by students, has to be addressed in further studies.
Objectives: The point of departure for the present work is the observation that, in comparison with Anglo-American countries or the Netherlands, Germany was responsible for only a marginal number of international publications in the field of medical education research before 2004. Recent years, however, have seen an increase in the importance of medical education research in Germany. The objective of this article is to evaluate the extent to which this trend can be substantiated by increased German publishing activity since the year 2004 in international, English-language journals in the subject area of "medical education research".
Methods: In the framework of a literature and content analysis, German-author articles from the years 2004 to 2013 in six international, English-language medical education research journals were evaluated. In order to obtain an overview of German research activity in this area, all project and original works with German first and last authors were identified and subjected to a more in-depth content analysis.
Results: In total, 10,055 articles were examined. The evaluation shows that between the years 2004 and 2013 179 articles (of which 145 are project or original works) by German authors were published in the journals examined. Fluctuations over the course of time were evidenced. The project and original works are primarily cross-sectional studies (27.8%) and randomised control studies (25.6%) on the subject of "teaching and learning methods" (43.6%).
Conclusions: In comparison with the years 2004-2008, a significant rise can be seen in the number of publications by German education researchers in international journals since the year 2009.
Aim: Performing vaccine and travel consultations is a crucial aspect of the daily routine in general medicine. However, medical education does not provide adequately and structured training for this future task of medical students. While existing courses mainly focus on theoretical aspects, we developed a course aiming to foster practical experience in performing vaccine and travel consultations. Project report: The course was implemented in the simulation clinic at the University of Munich in the summer 2011 semester using role-plays in a simulation-based learning environment. The course represents different disciplines involved in vaccine and travel medicine. Students' learning is supported through active engagement in planning and conducting consultations of patients.
Discussion and summary: The course was implemented successfully and students' acceptance was high. However, there is a need for structured teaching of theoretical basics in vaccine and travel medicine earlier in medical curriculum. The insights gained through our course are used for the development of the structured longitudinal curriculum "vaccine medicine".
Background: Collaboration as a key qualification in medical education and everyday routine in clinical care can substantially contribute to improving patient safety. Internal collaboration scripts are conceptualized as organized - yet adaptive - knowledge that can be used in specific situations in professional everyday life. This study examines the level of internalization of collaboration scripts in medicine. Internalization is understood as fast retrieval of script information.
Goal: The goals of the current study were the assessment of collaborative information, which is part of collaboration scripts, and the development of a methodology for measuring the level of internalization of collaboration scripts in medicine.
Method: For the contrastive comparison of internal collaboration scripts, 20 collaborative novices (medical students in their final year) and 20 collaborative experts (physicians with specialist degrees in internal medicine or anesthesiology) were included in the study. Eight typical medical collaborative situations as shown on a photo or video were presented to the participants for five seconds each. Afterwards, the participants were asked to describe what they saw on the photo or video. Based on the answers, the amount of information belonging to a collaboration script (script-information) was determined and the time each participant needed for answering was measured. In order to measure the level of internalization, script-information per recall time was calculated.
Results: As expected, collaborative experts stated significantly more script-information than collaborative novices. As well, collaborative experts showed a significantly higher level of internalization.
Conclusions: Based on the findings of this research, we conclude that our instrument can discriminate between collaboration novices and experts. It therefore can be used to analyze measures to foster subject-specific competency in medical education.
Background and aim: In German-speaking countries, the physicians' roles framework of the "Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists" (CanMEDS) is increasingly used to conceptualize postgraduate medical education. It is however unclear, whether it may also be applied to the final year of undergraduate education within clinical clerkships, called "Practical Year" (PY). Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore how clinically active physicians at a university hospital and at associated teaching hospitals judge the relevance of the seven CanMEDS roles (and their (role-defining) key competencies) in respect to their clinical work and as learning content for PY training. Furthermore, these physicians were asked whether the key competencies were actually taught during PY training.
Methods: 124 physicians from internal medicine and surgery rated the relevance of the 28 key competencies of the CanMEDS framework using a questionnaire. For each competency, following three aspects were rated: "relevance for your personal daily work", "importance for teaching during PY", and "implementation into actual PY teaching".
Results: In respect to the main study objective, all questionnaires could be included into analysis. All seven CanMEDS roles were rated as relevant for personal daily work, and also as important for teaching during PY. Furthermore, all roles were stated to be taught during actual PY training. The roles "Communicator", "Medical Expert", and "Collaborator" were rated as significantly more important than the other roles, for all three sub-questions. No differences were found between the two disciplines internal medicine and surgery, nor between the university hospital and associated teaching hospitals.
Conclusion: Participating physicians rated all key competencies of the CanMEDS model to be relevant for their personal daily work, and for teaching during PY. These findings support the suitability of the CanMEDS framework as a conceptual element of PY training.
Introduction: The importance of research, as promoted by the CanMEDS framework, is widely acknowledged. Many medical students in Germany work on a research project as part of their doctoral thesis whilst still going to medical school. However, a significant amount of projects are abandoned unfinished, which leads to substantial wastage of resources. One reason for this is an information deficit concerning undergraduate research projects.
Project description: To counteract this, we introduced an annual event at LMU Munich called DoktaMed with more than 600 visitors each year. It combines medical convention and research fair including keynote lectures, workshops and poster sessions as well as an exhibition of research groups and institutes. DoktaMed is a peer-to-peer event organized by a team of 40 students.
Results: A needs analysis before its implementation underlined the information deficit as a possible cause for the high rate of abandoned projects. In the annual evaluation, visitors of DoktaMed rate the event with an average grade of 2.1 on a six-level Likert scale (n=558, SD=1.06, with "1=very good", "6=poor"). They stated to now feel better informed about the topic and regarded visiting DoktaMed as a worthwhile investment of time.
Discussion: Students are generally satisfied with the event and feel better informed after visiting DoktaMed. However, many students never visit DoktaMed for various reasons. A possible improvement would be to present a greater number of clinical studies in addition to the laboratory work that DoktaMed focuses on now.
Conclusion: Evaluation after six years of DoktaMed is very promising. Visitors seem to be better informed. Nevertheless there is space for improvement in order to get more students and more faculty members involved. More studies are needed to assess long-term effects.
Background: Although demands on family physicians (FP) are to a large extent similar in the European Union, uniform assessment standards for family medicine (FM) specialty training and assessment do not exist. Aim of this pilot study was to elicit and compare the different modalities and assessment methods of FM specialty training in five European countries.
Methods: A semi structured survey was undertaken based on a convenient sample in five European countries (Denmark, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). The respondents were asked to respond to ten items about aspects of FM specialty training and assessment methods in their respective countries. If available, this data was completed with information from official websites of the countries involved.
Results: FM specialty training is performed heterogeneously in the surveyed countries. Training time periods range from three to five years, in some countries requiring a foundation program of up to two years. Most countries perform longitudinal assessment during FM specialty training using a combination of competence-based approach with additional formative and summative assessment. There is some evidence on the assessments methods used, however the assessment method used and costs of assessment differs remarkably between the participating countries.
Conclusions: Longitudinal and competence-based assessment is the presently preferred approach for FM specialty training. Countries which use less multifaceted methods for assessment could learn from best practice. Potential changes have significant cost implications.