TRAINING AND EDUCATION FOR FUTURE MULTIDISCIPLINARY MEDICAL SPECIALISTS

Abstract

To be best prepared for clinical practice, medical students will have to learn all professional subjects including subjects of their own discipline (ENT, Ophthalmology and Radiology), another as part of the three “main branches” (Internal medicine, Surgery and Pediatrics), and finally, selected subjects of other faculties such as Biochemistry, Biophysics, Anatomy etc. Future multidisciplinary medical specialists will be demanded to give, in six minutes each, a structured management plan of a case from another specialty in addition to discussion of a transparent and logical impression of the pathology of the clinically relevant subjects surrounding this case (Shafek Atta & A Alzahrani, 2020). Owing to the spiral and integrated curriculum of the medical school, different phases of the curriculum introduce and discuss the same pathology of each case from many different disciplinary perspectives. There is a shortage of available textbooks and only sparse studies published yet structured to cover the pathology of medical phenomena of the three main branches who would address this need literally and suitably. Since 2013, the first author of this study has been teaching the subject of Ophthalmology in a multidisciplinary classroom for 2nd and 3rd year medical students. Following its success, a similar educational format for various disciplines was later initiated in 2015 and applied to higher level medical students as a 5th year undergraduate course ultimately combining the disciplines of ENT and Ophthalmology. Early in the discipline of Ophthalmology, participating faculty have addressed students on the disease and disease category through the perspective of the pathophysiologies, clinical presentations, diagnostic steps, and management modalities. The preceding didactic lectures were carried out referring to the cases given, surrounding diagnosis and care discussions. Subsequently, teaching of the second discipline of that lecture was continued, lectured by other different faculties of the disease spread to this second discipline. Prior to the exam, the students have been prepared utilizing overarching lectures delivered by consultants in ENT after case objects determined by ENT and guided through the related clinically relevant GBs, OSCE’s cases together with faculty prepared portfolio. All this proven materials and teaching formats have been prepared in advance. In light of qualifications obtained as a result of the literature review conducted before the research, the following assumptions were formulated.