Background: By means of the revision of the Medical Licensure Act for Physicians (ÄAppO) in 2009, undergraduate palliative care education (UPCE) was incorporated as a mandatory cross sectional examination subject (QB13) in medical education in Germany. Its implementation still constitutes a major challenge for German medical faculties. There is a discrepancy between limited university resources and limited patient availabilities and high numbers of medical students. Apart from teaching theoretical knowledge and skills, palliative care education is faced with the particular challenge of imparting a professional and adequate attitude towards incurably ill and dying patients and their relatives.
Project description: Against this background, an evidence-based longitudinal UPCE curriculum was systematically developed following Kern's Cycle [1] and partly implemented and evaluated by the students participating in the pilot project. Innovative teaching methods (virtual standardised/simulated patient contacts, e-learning courses, interdisciplinary and interprofessional collaborative teaching, and group sessions for reflective self-development) aim at teaching palliative care-related core competencies within the clinical context and on an interdisciplinary and interprofessional basis.
Results: After almost five years of development and evaluation, the UPCE curriculum comprises 60 teaching units and is being fully implemented and taught for the first time in the winter semester 2014/15. The previous pilot phases were successfully concluded. To date, the pilot phases (n=26), the subproject "E-learning in palliative care" (n=518) and the blended-learning elective course "Communication with dying patients" (n=12) have been successfully evaluated.
Conclusion: All conducted development steps and all developed programmes are available for other palliative care educators (Open Access). The integrated teaching formats and methods (video, e-learning module, interprofessional education, group sessions for reflexive self-development) and their evaluations are intended to make a contribution to an evidence-based development of palliative care curricula in Germany.
In 2013, the Methodology in Medical Education Research Committee ran a symposium on "Research in Medical Education" as part of its ongoing faculty development activities. The symposium aimed to introduce to participants educational research methods with a specific focus on research in medical education. Thirty-five participants were able to choose from workshops covering qualitative methods, quantitative methods and scientific writing throughout the one and a half days. The symposium's evaluation showed participant satisfaction with the format as well as suggestions for future improvement. Consequently, the committee will offer the symposium again in a modified form in proximity to the next annual Congress of the German Society of Medical Education.
Background: Over multiple years, the didactic concept of "peer-assisted learning" (PAL) has proved to be valuable for medical education. Particularly in the field of the nowadays widely established Skills-Labs, the assignment of student tutors is both popular and effective. The aim of the underlying study is to assess the current status of PAL programs within German medical faculties' Skills-Labs regarding their distribution, extent, structure and content based on a nation-wide survey.
Methods: All 36 medical faculties in Germany were contacted and asked for their participation (via telephone or in written form) in the survey encompassing 16 central questions as to the structure of established PAL programs. Data obtained were subject to quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Results: 35 of 36 (97.2%) medical faculties participated in the survey. A PAL program was shown to be established at 33 (91.7%) faculties. However, the results show distinct differences between different faculties with respect to extent and content of the PAL programs.
Conclusions: Among German medical Skills-Labs, PAL has been established almost ubiquitously. Further studies on the conception and standardization of training concepts appear to be pivotal for the advancement of PAL in the context of Skills-Labs.
In this paper we present our 5-year-experience with a large-scale mentoring program for undergraduate medical students at the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU). We implemented a two-tiered program with a peer-mentoring concept for preclinical students and a 1:1-mentoring concept for clinical students aided by a fully automated online-based matching algorithm. Approximately 20-30% of each student cohort participates in our voluntary mentoring program. Defining ideal program evaluation strategies, recruiting mentors from beyond the academic environment and accounting for the mentoring network reality remain challenging. We conclude that a two-tiered program is well accepted by students and faculty. In addition the online-based matching seems to be effective for large-scale mentoring programs.
Objective: Due to the development of medical education in the past decade the role of teachers has changed and requires higher didactic competence. Student evaluation of teaching alone does not lead to considerable improvement of teaching quality. We present the concept of "Integrative Teaching Consultation", which comprises both the teacher's reflection and own objectives to improve their teaching as well as data from students ratings.
Methods: Teachers in collaboration with a teaching consultant reflect on their teaching ability and set themselves improvement goals. Then the consultant himself observes a teaching session and subsequently analyses the respective student evaluation in order to give meaningful feedback to the teacher.
Results: The combination of student feedback with professional consultation elements can initiate and maintain improvements in teaching.
Conclusion: Teaching consultation complements existing faculty development programs and increases the benefit of student evaluations.
Introduction: Medical students with a non-German background face several challenges during their studies. Besides support given by foreign student offices further specific projects for international students have been developed and are offered by medical faculties. However, so far, neither a systematic survey of the faculties' perceived problems nor of the offered support exists.
Method: All study deaneries of medical faculties in Germany were contacted between April and October 2013 and asked for their participation in a telephone interview. Interview partners were asked about 1.) The percentage of non-German students at the medical faculty; 2.) The perceived difficulties and problems of foreign students; 3.) The offers for non-German students; and 4.) The specification of further possibilities of support. Given information was noted, frequencies counted and results interpreted via frequency analysis.
Results: Only 39% of the medical faculties could give detailed information about the percentage of non-German students. They reported an average share of 3.9% of students with an EU migration background and 4.9% with a non-EU background. Most frequently cited offers are student conducted tutorials, language courses and tandem-programs. The most frequently reported problem by far is the perceived lack of language skills of foreign students at the beginning of their studies. Suggested solutions are mainly the development of tutorials and the improvement of German medical terminology.
Discussion: Offers of support provided by medical faculties for foreign students vary greatly in type and extent. Support offered is seen to be insufficient in coping with the needs of the international students in many cases. Hence, a better coverage of international students as well as further research efforts to the specific needs and the effectiveness of applied interventions seem to be essential.
Objectives: Interprofessional collaboration leads to an improvement in health care. This call for increased interprofessional collaboration has led to national and international recommendations for interprofessional learning and education. The GMA has taken up this challenge and has implemented a working group on "interprofessional education in the health professions" to address this topic. The terminology used to describe collaboration among the health professions seems to vary and does not reflect any clear consensus. The aim of this paper is to identify the different terms used to describe collaboration between health professions and to analyse their use in German journals.
Methods: The terms frequently used to describe collaboration between health professionals were identified and defined. German medical journals were then pragmatically analyzed regarding the use of the terms interprof* and interdiszip*.
Results: The German terms for interprofessional and interdisciplinary were not used consistently in the journals reviewed.
Conclusion: There seems to be no agreement on the use of terms to describe the collaboration between health professions. Consistent terminology should be used as a basis for promoting collaboration and improving understanding among the parties involved.
Background: Learning on the ward as a practice-oriented preparation for the future workplace plays a crucial role in the medical education of future physicians. However, students' ward internship is partially problematic due to condensed workflows on the ward and the high workload of supervising physicians. For the first time in a German-speaking setting, students' expectations and concerns about their internship on the ward are examined in a qualitative analysis regarding their internal medicine rotation within clinical medical education.
Methods: Of a total of 168 medical students in their 6th semester at the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg, 28 students (m=8, f=20, Ø 23.6 years) took part in focus group interviews 3 to 5 days prior to their internship on the internal medicine ward within their clinical internal medicine rotation. Students were divided into four different focus groups. The protocols were transcribed and a content analysis was conducted based on grounded theory.
Results: We gathered a total of 489 relevant individual statements. The students hope for a successful integration within the ward team, reliable and supportive supervisors and supervision in small groups. They expect to face the most common diseases, to train the most important medical skills, to assume full responsibility for their own patients and to acquire their own medical identity. The students fear an insufficient time frame to achieve their aims. They are also concerned they will have too little contact with patients and inadequate supervision.
Conclusion: For the development and standardization of effective student internships, the greatest relevance should be attributed to guidance and supervision by professionally trained and well-prepared medical teachers, entailing a significant increase in staff and costs. A structural framework is required in order to transfer the responsibility for the treatment of patients to the students at an early stage in medical education and in a longitudinal manner. The data suggest that the development and establishment of guidelines for medical teachers associated with clearly defined learning objectives for the students' internships are urgently needed. Based on our findings, we provide first recommendations and suggest possible solutions.
With their publication on quality management of clinical-practical instruction for Practical Year medical students in Germany and the preparation of a catalogue of criteria, Raes et al. tackle questions, both in terms of content and structural framework, in a current and relevant subject area [1]. The following commentary provides an additional outline of the current situation of clinical-practical instruction during the so-called "clinical electives year" in Switzerland, which broadly corresponds to the Practical Year in Germany.
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