Both the hidden and informal curriculum take place after or next to the theoretical teaching, the formal teaching and has an important part in the shaping of the medical students’ professionalism and professional values. Moreover, these forms of the curriculum have a major impact on the learning potential of med students. Yet little is known about this subject. A lot has been written but only from a theoretical stand point. I've written about the hidden and informal curriculum in a previous post. Most of the research to date has been generally focused on the undergraduate and graduate medical curricula .....read more »

Medical Schools or medical education is mainly done in universities. Medical education in universities especially undergraduate education in North America as well as in Europe are full with very basic science such as chemistry, physics, but also laboratory branches such as biochemical education. I can still remember long afternoons using a pipette in endless rows of test tubes. Scientific research is also integrated in Med Schools. Even community based schools are strongly connected with universities. This model stems from the beginning of the previous century. Obviously medical education liaised with the universities has many benefits, the close partnership results in .....read more »

Both the hidden and informal curriculum take place after or next to the theoretical teaching, the formal teaching and has an important part in the shaping of the medical students' professionalism and professional values. Moreover, these forms of the curriculum have a major impact on the learning potential of med students. Yet little is known about this subject. A lot has been written but only from a theoretical stand point. The hidden curriculum is the physical and workforce organizational infrastructure in the academic health center that influences the learning process and the socialization to professional norms and rituals. The informal curriculum is .....read more »

The government of The Netherlands has decided to abolish the numerous fixus (weighted lottery) for medical education. This meant that only 2850 students were able to go to med school a year. The numerous fixus was mainly based on high grades on high school. Universities are allowed to make there own selection criteria for admittance to med school. They could still use the average high school grades but they can't increase the number of medical students since medical education is very expensive. In The Netherlands a med student costs a 120.000 Euros a year, for comparison a students at Law .....read more »

The attachment theory from the sixties of the previous century is still used e.g. in psychotherapy but also in research such as shown in a recent post on:How do social relationships function online. Is attachment theory also useful in medical education, does it explain the poor performance by some doctors? After all doctors are required to engage attachment relationships with their patients. It's part of their job. In professional health care the relationship as caregiver is part of the working relationship. This interesting question whether attachment theory is useful in medical education and poor performing doctors when under stress is discussed .....read more »

Often I explain to my residents and medical students that in the end they will arrive at the same diagnosis as I do, it only takes them somewhat more time. Medical education is mainly about seeing many patients and recognizing illness patterns. Experts have seen many patients and developed illness scripts, a kind of algorithm. Expert physicians are constantly moving through a series of learning cycles throughout their career. From Medical Education, a great blog You can assist learners in a clinical setting to develop their own patterns by asking them to graph common illnesses as they progress through their training. .....read more »

Empathy is an important asset for a doctor. This ability to appreciate patients’ emotions and express this emotional awareness improves clinical outcomes, professional satisfaction, and patient adherence to medical recommendations, and is believed to significantly improve patient satisfaction. More on empathy and what it is can be read here There is a significant decline in empathy during the third year of medical school. This decline occurs during a time when the curriculum is shifting toward patient-care activities. Moreover, empathy for the mentally ill is often more difficult for physicians and med students, probably because they are unable to imagine the suffering of .....read more »

This is a video about using twitter during lectures. It's mostly about the professor trying to get motivated by something different than useful for the students. See this video about the pro and cons of using twitter during lectures and ways to use it. Read the full story on The Chronicle of Higher Education: Teaching With Twitter: Not for the Faint of Heart No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. ..read more »

Had an idea to use writing of a blog for a minor in medical education. The idea was sacrificed for other options for minors. Seems that blogs in medical education can promote reflection and professionalism. Professionalism being one of the CanMed competences used in medical education and one of the most important ones not easily educated. An important part of professionalism is self reflection. It's necessary for the integration of theory with experience. For acquiring a professional attitude one needs to reflect on his or her own values, shortcomings, improvable aspects of their role as physician. A blog during medical .....read more »

The course in their third year of med school about the Brains and the Sensory system in which psychiatry participates is a course of at least three months. It's made of different sub courses which each take about 3 to 4 weeks. These courses are evaluated at the end. That's to say months after the course ended because the med students are preparing for their exams and teachers are already occupied with other teaching obligations. These evaluations are mostly done by the coordinating medical specialist, most of the teacher are not present during the evaluation. In conclusion: to little to .....read more »