Abstract
BackgroundEstablishing innovative teaching programs in biomedical education involves dealing with several national and supra-national (i.e. European) regulations as well as with new pedagogical and demographic demands. We aimed to develop and validate a suitable instrument to integrate activities across preclinical years in all Health Science Degrees while meeting requirements of national quality agencies.MethodsThe new approach was conceived at two different levels: first, we identified potentially integrative units from different fields according to national learning goals established for each preclinical year (national quality agency regulations). Secondly, we implemented a new instrument that combines active methodologies in Work Station Learning Activities (WSLA), using clinical scenarios as a guiding common thread to instruct students from an integrated perspective. We evaluated students’ perception through a Likert-type survey of a total of 118 students enrolled in the first year of the Bachelor’s Degree in Medicine.ResultsOur model of integrated activities through WSLA is feasible, scalable and manageable with large groups of students and a minimum number of instructors, two major limitations in many medical schools. Students’ perception of WSLA was positive in overall terms. Seventy nine percent of participants stated that WSLA sessions were more useful than non-integrated activities. Eighty three percent confirmed that the WSLA methodology was effective at integrating concepts covered by different subjects.ConclusionsThe WSLA approach is a flexible and scalable instrument for moving towards integrated curricula, and it can be successfully adapted to teach basic subjects in preclinical years of Health Science degrees. WSLA can be applied to large groups of students in a variety of contexts or environments using clinical cases as connecting threads.
Highlights
Establishing innovative teaching programs in biomedical education involves dealing with several national and supra-national (i.e. European) regulations as well as with new pedagogical and demographic demands
We have implemented a new instrument based on active-learning approaches to delineate scalable modules of Work Station Learning Activities (WSLA), Here, we describe our approach and test preliminary results of our pilot experience to lay the foundations for new curricular actions aimed at achieving horizontal and vertical integration of basic and clinical sciences within Health Science undergraduate degree programs
The present study describes a pilot program that implements our new instrument, namely the Work Station Learning Activities (WSLA), for teaching basic sciences with a horizontally integrated scheme
Summary
Establishing innovative teaching programs in biomedical education involves dealing with several national and supra-national (i.e. European) regulations as well as with new pedagogical and demographic demands. Its aim was to make higher education more relevant to the individual, allowing students to move between degrees and González-Soltero et al BMC Medical Education (2017) 17:236 activities at the expense of teacher-centered lectures This point was specially highlighted for biomedical education by the signatories of the Granada Declaration back in 2001, where achieving horizontal and vertical integration of subjects was a matter of concern for policymakers. Despite these national recommendations, and that medical education reformers advocated combining disciplines and organizing integrated learning experiences for students, the influence of a Flexner vision of biomedical education [2, 3] has been such that most curricula still retain a basic non-integrated teacher-centered model with few active-learning sessions [4]. Since the time of Flexner [3], the medical school basic science curriculum has largely consisted of discrete courses controlled by individual departments
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