medical sciences

Globalisation and Internationalisation of the IMS Curriculum

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment

THE TEAM

Student leads: Boya Zhang, Shawn Lee, Dan Kviat

Staff lead: Jacob Wright

 

DEPARTMENT

Cancer Institute

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

Our project aims to increase global awareness in the IMS Undergraduate Curriculum. The current curriculum primarily focuses on a more eurocentric context, limiting global exposure. However, especially in an increasingly globalised society and a vastly diverse student population, global awareness has become increasingly more important, for future careers or better representation of the diverse student population. As we aim to find ways to introduce more global perspectives into the curriculum, we have conducted a survey with both students and faculty members, to understand their perspectives and establish whether there is the need to increase global awareness. This is followed by a short interview with a few students and faculty members, to have them elaborate on their survey questions and for us to further understand their perspectives of globalisation (i.e. what it might be and how it might be challenging to incorporate more into the curriculum). We managed to gain insightful comments from both faculty members and students. The team will then gather and analyse all of the data, before designing a framework that can help faculty members/module leads, as a reference when they are designing the curriculum.

 

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

I would advise that they start earlier, as it will be hard to manage the project on top of school lectures and projects etc. I would also suggest that students/staff should do a ChangeMakers project on something they are really passionate about or have an immense of interest in.

Gamification of MBBS kidney/renal learning

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THE TEAM

Staff lead: Tom Olney
Academic lead: Dr Ben Caplin
Student leads: Sharma Ganesananthan, Praoparn Asanitthong, Max Rees
DEPARTMENT
UCL Medical School
WHAT HAPPENED?
We have created a revision tool for renal medicine, part of the 4th year of the MBBS, helping to cover a range of learning objectives through a story built in Articulate Rise. The story is set in Costa Rica where there are a high number of cases of CKDu (chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology) and follows a young farm worked called Carlos over a period of time. You take the role of a medical student on elective and have to answer various questions and quizzes to help test knowledge and keep it interactive. I had the idea for using CKDu, but the students and Dr Caplin put together the outline of a story and the students all worked together on creating the content, while I focused on ensuring consistency and interactivity, and Dr Caplin ensured it was academically correct. Feedback from a small focus group before release enjoyed going through it, found it more interesting than traditional methods, and felt it was a useful revision tool.

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

It’s a great opportunity to do something a bit different and have students and academics work together to create something that both meets academic standards, but also is interesting and will be used by students. The main advice I have is to try and complete it in a shorter period of time near the start of a term where students feel they have a bit more time, do this by having a clear plan of work to complete and deadlines. I did not do this and the project has stalled at various points as the students haven’t had time to work on it.

Study Skills for UCL Medical Students (Study Skills for UCLMS); identifying the need and how to meet it?

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THE TEAM

Lead staff: Dr Emma Kelley, Dr Carys Phillips.
Lead students: Philip Marshall-Lockyer, Nicole Tay, Anais Deere, Dhivya Ilangovan.

DEPARTMENT

UCL Medical School

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

Study skills are understood to be key to medical education [1] and help shape students into effective learners both at medical school and beyond. A recently published article in RUMS review (medical student-led) raised the concern from medical students about the lack of Study Skills teaching available at UCLMS. Following this, ‘study skills clinics’ were offered to undergraduate medical students to discuss a specific study skill issue they were having for which there was a high uptake. The several recurring themes noted by the staff facilitating the clinic lead to two group forums being set up for students based on these themes where there were ongoing comments from students that there is a desire for further study skills support. As a result, it was essential that these concerns were investigated to improve students’ confidence with their study skills. Through focus groups and a questionnaire, we identified what study skills medical students at UCLMS felt they needed support with, how they would like it delivered and what resources the medical school could provide. We now hope to utilise this data to provide feedback on the state of study skills teaching and inform recommendations for improvement moving forward. Although we still have a lot of work ahead of us, we have high hopes for the future and are already in the process of creating a new Study Skills Moodle page to improve the accessibility of the resources available. [1] Dwarika-Bhagat N, Sa B, Majumder MAA. Does study skill matter? A descriptive study on undergraduate health profession students in the University of the West Indies. Education in Medicine Journal. 2017;9(2):27–40. https://doi.org/10.21315/eimj2017.9.2.3

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

Setting informal deadlines for tasks to be completed is a great way of motivating yourself to keep on track, particularly when other commitments get in the way. It also means the rest of the team is more aware of how the project is progressing, even if they are not involved in every aspect of it, leading to greater coherence within the group. Therefore, it is also important to let your team know when you have other commitments to prioritise, so that such deadlines can be planned around this and nobody is left overloaded with work.

LGBTQ+ Toolkit for Medical Educators

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The team

Dr Jayne Kavanagh, Dr Santino Coduri-Fulford, Dr Marchesa Ataide-Da Costa.

Department

UCL Medical School

What happened?
A toolkit to help medical educators make their teaching resources and sessions more LGBTQ+ inclusive.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Factor in feedback and the time needed for this.

Development of an Inclusion Student Advocate Programme in the Faculty of Medical Sciences

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The team
Lead: Dr Nephtali Marina-Gonzalez
Support Students: Moon Cheng, Tala Al Ajmi, Emma Last.
Department
Division of Medicine
What happened?
At the beginning of the year, we gathered together to develop a program that promotes equality, diversity and inclusion within the Faculty of Medical Sciences. In hopes that by collecting the opinions of the cohort, we can identify the areas of improvement and come up with solutions that could allow a better sense of belonging in the faculty. As a faculty with many students from different backgrounds, race and gender, we believe that it is essential for us to keep EDI awareness high in order to help everyone reach their greatest potential in their academics whilst feeling supported as a unique individual. We planned 3 sections to the project, the survey, Interviews and Alumni Talks. In which the survey and interviews were constructed to collect data from the student body and the Alumni Talks are planned to invite previous students from different career fields to share their experiences with current experiences. We have finished collecting responses form the survey and are currently in the middle of organising interviews with students who self identify as having disabilities and understanding what we could do in order to help them have a more smooth learning journey. The alumni talks will be held next academic year. Since the student advocates are also student representatives from different courses in IMS, we are able to attend SSCC meetings and report to leads and other student representatives about our project. This is for the purpose of letting staff in the faculty of medical sciences to be aware of students opinions and concerns. This project is still ongoing and we hope our efforts put in this project will be able to benefit current students and most importantly prospective students as well.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Make sure you could keep a good balance between your degree coursework and the Changemakers project at the same time. It would need good time management and also be self-motivated to progress the project throughout the year because you would have to set deadlines yourself and try to achieve them. Always communicate with your lead and other team members when you are confused with parts of the project since more ideas and opinions come up in discussions.

‘Critical Medicine’ Teaching Series: a DtMC x EDI collaboration

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The team

Student team: Tina Plowman (Year 6) – lead

Support students: Davina Puri (Year 5), Anjana Narasimhan (Year 4), Lauren Pereira-Greene (Year 2), Anaiya Kaka (Year 2), Srishti Agarwal (Year 4), Shem Braithwaite (Year 3).

Staff team: Lois Haruna-Cooper, Jayne Kavanagh, Sarah Wong (FY1, honorary teaching fellow).

Department
UCL Medical School
What happened?
We received UCL Changemaker’s funding to run our Critical Medicine Workshop Series, a second collaboration between Decolonising the Medical Curriculum working group and the UCLMS EDI Committee. This was designed to be a free series of interactive workshops open to all UCL Medical Students. The topics ranged from Psychiatry, with our workshop on at St Pancras hospital to the History of Medicine with a tour by one of the curators of the new History of Medicine exhibition at the Science Museum. The overall aim was to develop critical thinking skills applicable to medicine in both theory and practice. Having a critical consciousness enables students to recognise inequality and power structures within healthcare, much like wider society, and through these workshops we had discussions on directions for the future of medicine (and us medical students) to work towards health equity. We got feedback via forms and also by video – so watch this space for the final report and summary video clip!
For more information, find us on:
FB – Critical Medicine: https://www.facebook.com/criticalmedicine
FB – Decolonising the Medical Curriculum: https://www.facebook.com/groups/decolonisingmed
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DecolonisingMed WordPress: https://decolonisingthemedicalcurriculum.wordpress.com
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
– The project might turn out different from how you planned but time management is the key – have a structure and timeline with milestones to track your progress and also recognise when to wrap up! – Keep in contact with the Changemaker’s team and faculty for advice and support – even if it is just to let them know everything is going well!