The “MD Physician” educational program of “General Medicine” Faculty of YSMU complies with the requirements set forth by the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME).
According to Konstantin Yenkoyan, Vice-Rector for Scientific Affairs, head of the “MD Physician” Educational Program of “General Medicine” Faculty, the program is being changed not so much to meet the requirements of international accreditation, but because it is a requirement of today’s medical education. “Regardless of the accreditation process, we should have done this. We have to change the educational program in accordance with today’s challenges,” the vice-rector notes.
What is fundamentally new, and what was the basis for the need for change?
Before the changes, according to Konstantin Yenkoyan, the program of the medical university was traditional, very similar to the German and post-Soviet models. “Except for American and British schools, many are more or less similar to the traditional educational program, but they have already started to make internal changes within the framework of that educational program in the last twenty years. And the main reason was the so-called integration. The shortcoming of our program was the low level of integration. In general, if we speak in the professional language of education, the educational program has different degrees of integration. Our educational program met the minimum level of integration. And what does integration mean? The subjects, both in the lower and upper years, should be more connected, so that the final goal is the result of a unified integration”, explains the vice-rector. In order to solve the issue of integration, according to his information, the educational program is now taught in a modular way.
“The new educational program responds to 3 main features or characteristics:
The whole meaning of our program is that we will not only get a building by constantly increasing our knowledge, stacking stone by stone, but also by smoothly climbing up, we will ensure the complementarity of the courses, the interconnection with each other”, emphasizes Konstantin Yenkoyan.
In general, within 6 years, with the new program, the university prepares a specialist with the qualification of “Doctor” with the specialty of “Medical Work”.
“Since 1999, the faculties of “MD Physician”, “Pediatrics” and “Medical Prevention” were closed, and instead of them, the unified faculty of “General Medicine” was created. The purpose of this faculty was to train “generalists”.
Now we want to bring that idea to life in terms of content. In other words, to prepare a doctor who has the minimum knowledge, skills and abilities that will allow him to delve into this or that narrow specialty. A student should be able to decide whether to continue his education by becoming a doctor in a narrow specialty, or a researcher, or even continue his education in another field. Another advantage of this educational program is that about ten credits are allocated to the research component.
In other words, within 6 years, the student must have research knowledge, abilities, and skills. And that is the reason that already in the second year, the “Fundamentals of Research” course becomes an integral part of this program at the basic level. We need our student to be academically educated, so that he can understand the physics textbook read anywhere, for example. In other words, he should develop such a way of thinking,” the vice-rector for Scientific affairs notes, adding that these are the first steps of research-oriented education.
What does modular education mean?
Subjects will be called “courses” from now on, and several courses will be combined under one module. “Look, for example, the concepts of “biochemistry” subject and “surgery” subject will no longer exist. What we teach is called a “course” because through it we understand what a medical student needs in today’s education framework to have minimal knowledge.
Several courses that solve a relatively specific global problem are combined into one, called a “module”. Let me simplify, for example, in the first year they used to study anatomy: osteology, muscles, joints, skull, 4 separate sections. In the new program, we pass 2 separate modules in the first semester: “Musculoskeletal System 1 and 2″, which will end with 2 separate exams”, explains Konstantin Yenkoyan.
The student goes through the musculoskeletal system as follows: the course is called “Anatomy with Radiology ”. “Radiology, which was only in the upper years, also descends to the lower years, that is, the anatomy class is passed at the same time as the radio diagnosis tools, the bone is not only explained, but also shown by radiodiagnosis.
In the case of the second module, Musculoskeletal System 2, the course “Anatomy in conjunction with radiology” is retained, but “Clinical Anatomy” is added to it. We are not going for disciplinary, separate, department-by-department education, but we are going for interdisciplinary education. This is expressed by the logical continuation of these courses, we are trying to ensure integration with this,” the vice-rector emphasizes.
One of the demands of the new educational program is the addition of optional subjects. “In general, high rank universities must provide quality basic academic education, and for this, auxiliary subjects are also needed, which will make academics complete. We should be able to provide optional courses. A student must do many things independently and have adequate time for it. The student should be not only an object, but also a subject.
Teaching should become student-centered, the student should be more involved in the educational process and turn from a passive listener into an active participant. This process should be ensured step by step”, Konstantin Yenkoyan says. According to him, the teaching staff is very important in this process. “We work with first-year chairs every day, logical problems are constantly raised, we try to solve them with joint efforts,” says the vice-rector.
The evaluation system is also changing. if previously only the test system worked, now 20% of the evaluation process will be based on internal current work.
“Ultimately, our goal should not be to evaluate the student, but to give him knowledge so that he can then use that knowledge correctly. We have reviewed both the architecture and the structure of the entire educational program, making the program in line with the challenges of modern medical education”, – summarizes Konstantin Yenkoyan, Vice Rector for Scientific Affairs and Head of the “MD Physician” Educational Program of “General Medicine” Faculty of YSMU.