Looking Ahead: Futures Planning for Medical Education

Comparative analysis of factors and barriers intervening in research participation among romanian and international medical graduates from one romanian medical faculty across three generations

OBJECTIVES

This study focuses on the factors that encouraged engagement in research activities, as well as the barriers that restricted their involvement, until the final year of study at Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca, Faculty of Medicine. The main objectives of this study are to investigate potential disparities in research culture and student engagement in various research opportunities between Romanian and international medical graduates, as well as to conduct an examination of the observed patterns across various graduating years (2021-2023).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A cross-sectional investigation was conducted among graduate students of the Faculty of Medicine at the Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. From 2021 to 2023, all graduate students from the Romanian and international programs of the faculty were asked to participate in the study by filling out an anonymous online questionnaire. The final sample included 572 participants, of whom 392 were students from the Romanian section and 180 were students from international programs.

RESULTS

Motivation and personal interest drive research engagement, according to over half of graduates. For over one-third of graduates, institutional elements like financial support and education also play a major role, as does the desire to enhance their curriculum vitae. More than 25% of graduates value community influence, 70% of graduates attended medical congresses, 12-15% presented papers at medical conferences, 23% wrote medical articles, 10-15% published at least one scientific paper in medical journals, and 20% participated in medical school research projects. Comparative analysis showed that Romanian students start research earlier, attend more medical conferences, present posters, collect data for studies, and are more interested in publishing graduation thesis data in scientific journals. To encourage international students to participate in research, the study found that colleagues' examples were more important, and both time and funds were key barriers. The research also shows that 2022 and 2023 graduates will organize more scientific conferences. According to the study, 2022 graduates began their research earlier than others.

CONCLUSIONS

To increase student engagement in research activities, medical schools should prioritize the promotion of positive factors, minimize common barriers, offer customized support and resources, encourage collaborative research activities, and facilitate cross-cultural learning.

Modern medical schools curricula: Necessary innovations and priorities for change

Medical schools' curricula have expanded over the decades to incorporate important new medical breakthroughs and discoveries. Their current focus and overall structures remain, however, stubbornly captive of early 20th-century thinking, with changes having been undertaken in a piecemeal fashion. Indeed, since the notable Flexner reform in 1910, medical schools' study plans have suffered successive and typically always partial adjustments which have failed to keep up with scientific, technological and sociological change. This difficulty may be attributable to the well-known conservatism of medical schools, where updating study plans is a process that invariably encounters numerous barriers to change. These observations were afforded detailed attention some 15 years ago when de Oliveira wrote: 'it is now perfectly demonstrated that public medical schools have not been able to adapt their operation in depth and in due time to the new demands of teaching dictated by an explosive scientific and technological development'. Recent advances in communication and information technologies, as well as the introduction of new pedagogical techniques, have the potential to bring significant benefits to medical practice and healthcare systems, but these have not in the main become properly taught and utilized. The proposition that healthcare is evolving from reactive disease care to care that is predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory was initially regarded as highly speculative, yet systems approaches to biology and medicine are now beginning to provide experience of both health and disease at the molecular, cellular and organ levels. Medicine is a broad scientific field. In contrast to the 19th century, current medical 'sectarianism' is a positive by-product of rapid and gratifying medical progress, and the multiplicity of new models means that the lines of evidence legitimately bearing on practice and health policymaking are already highly diverse and likely to become ever more variegated over time. Put simply, most sound decisions, by definition, will be evidence-informed and not evidence-based, where divergence may be as informative as convergence. Here, the most enduring lesson of history is, perhaps, that clinical medicine is constantly rediscovering its humanistic core. Complexities create opportunities for innovation. In innovative environments, high-performing organizations are finding ways to create a culture that supports a diverse workforce preparing to deliver different models of care, with direct implications for excellence of patient experience and strong repercussions for medical education. The COVID-19 crisis saw major increases in the use of telemedicine, virtual office visits and other forms of online contact, and these are likely to increase considerably. This particular transformation will not be easy or comfortable to make. But reconfiguration of medical education seems inevitable, fuelled by online educational technology and the need to transform clinical training to more outpatient settings with promotion based on competency and person-centeredness, not simply time. As we prepare to enter 2024, this is an exciting time to be working in healthcare. We have more evidence than ever about how to provide high quality, person-centered care, and to keep patients safe. Shame on us if there is any hesitation about applying this knowledge to make the healthcare experience better for patients and providers. Embracing change and making continuous improvements are essential and urgent priorities for medicine and healthcare and, as we describe in the current article, will become more and more indispensably important in our rapidly changing world.

Evaluation of the impact of technical physicians on improving individual patient care with technology

BACKGROUND

The rapid introduction of technical innovations in healthcare requires that professionals are adequately prepared for correct clinical use of medical technology. In response to the technological transformation of healthcare, a new type of professional, the Technical Physician (TP), was created and is trained to improve individual patient care using technology tailored to the needs of individual patients. This study investigates the TPs' impact on patient care in terms of innovation, effectiveness, efficiency, and patient safety.

METHOD

Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 TPs and 17 medical specialists (MSs) working in academic or teaching hospitals in the Netherlands. The pre-structured and open-ended interview questions focused on: 1) the perceived impact on innovation, effectiveness, efficiency, and safety, and 2) opportunities and challenges in daily work.

RESULTS

TPs and MSs unanimously experienced that TPs contributed to innovation. A majority indicated that effectiveness (TP 57%; MS 71%) and efficiency (TP 67%; MS 65%) of clinical practice had increased. For safety, 87% of TPs but only 47% of MSs reported an increase. The main explanation given for TPs positive impact was combining medical and technical knowledge. Mainly organizational barriers were mentioned as a potential cause for a less visible contribution of TPs.

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

TPs and MSs unanimously agreed that TPs contributed to innovating patient care through their integrative medical and technical competencies. Most TPs and MSs also reported increased effectiveness, efficiency, and safety of patient care due to the TPs' work. TPs and MSs expected that the TPs' impact on direct and indirect patient care will be enhanced once organizational barriers are removed.

Remote Ultrasound Scan Procedures with Medical Robots: Towards New Perspectives between Medicine and Engineering

Background

This review explores state-of-the-art teleoperated robots for medical ultrasound scan procedures, providing a comprehensive look including the recent trends arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

Physicians' experience is included to indicate the importance of their role in the design of improved medical robots. From this perspective, novel classes of equipment for remote diagnostics based on medical robotics are discussed in terms of innovative engineering technologies.

Results

Relevant literature is reviewed under the system engineering point of view, organizing the discussion on the basis of the main technological focus of each contribution.

Conclusions

This contribution is aimed at stimulating new research to obtain faster results on teleoperated robotics for ultrasound diagnostics in response to the high demand raised by the ongoing pandemic.

Triple Challenge: How Medical Students May Solve 3 Long-Standing Problems Bedeviling Health Systems and Medical Education

Medical education and the health system must address challenges that, despite significant effort, seem unsolvable. Health systems science (HSS)-the fundamental understanding of how care is delivered, how health professionals work together to deliver that care, and how the health system can improve patient care and health care delivery-is increasingly being recognized as a potential source of solutions to these challenges. In this article, the authors review the 43 abstracts submitted to the American Medical Association Accelerating Change in Medical Education 2018 Health Systems Science Student Impact Competition that aligned with the goals of HSS. Their qualitative review identified 3 long-standing problems in medicine and medical education that were frequently addressed by the submissions: improving care for those with mental illness (5 submissions), improving diversity in medicine (4 submissions), and improving teamwork and interprofessional education (4 submissions). The authors extracted lessons learned from these abstracts. Many of the projects detailed in this article continue to make an impact at multiple levels. While not all projects were scientifically rigorous enough to be published on their own and the quality of the data presented in the abstracts varied widely, many provide innovative ideas for potentially solving long-standing problems that may have been overlooked or not considered sufficiently. These projects and their subsequent analysis demonstrate that not only do medical students make significant impacts on the health system, patients, and other health professionals when equipped with HSS skills, working in health care teams, and advised by mentors, but they also may be able to address some of medicine's and medical education's long-standing challenges. The fresh perspective and high energy of medical students are valuable and should be nurtured and encouraged.

The Future Comes Early for Medical Educators

Many experts have foretold of a digital transformation in medical education. Yet, until recently, day-to-day practices for frontline clinician-educators, who cherish close physical and intellectual contact between the patient, learner, and teacher, have remained largely unchanged. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted that model and is forcing teachers to pursue new ways to reach learners. We provide a roadmap for educators to start their transformation from an analog to a digital approach by harnessing existing tools including podcasts, social media, and videoconferencing. Teachers will need to enhance the same pedagogical and interpersonal practices that underpin effective in-person education while they learn new skills as they become curators, creators, and moderators in the digital space. This adaptation is essential, as many of the changes in medical education spurred by COVID-19 will likely far outlast the pandemic.

Technology Can Augment, but Not Replace, Critical Human Skills Needed for Patient Care

The practice of medicine is changing rapidly as a consequence of electronic health record adoption, new technologies for patient care, disruptive innovations that breakdown professional hierarchies, and evolving societal norms. Collectively, these have resulted in the modification of the physician's role as the gatekeeper for health care, increased shift-based care, and amplified interprofessional team-based care. Technological innovations present opportunities as well as challenges. Artificial intelligence, which has great potential, has already transformed some tasks, particularly those involving image interpretation. Ubiquitous access to information via the Internet by physicians and patients alike presents benefits as well as drawbacks: patients and providers have ready access to virtually all of human knowledge, but some websites are contaminated with misinformation and many people have difficulty differentiating between solid, evidence-based data and untruths. The role of the future physician will shift as complexity in health care increases and as artificial intelligence and other technologies advance. These technological advances demand new skills of physicians; memory and knowledge accumulation will diminish in importance while information management skills will become more important. In parallel, medical educators must enhance their teaching and assessment of critical human skills (e.g., clear communication, empathy) in the delivery of patient care. The authors emphasize the enduring role of critical human skills in safe and effective patient care even as medical practice is increasingly guided by artificial intelligence and related technology, and they suggest new and longitudinal ways of assessing essential noncognitive skills to meet the demands of the future. The authors envision practical and achievable benefits accruing to patients and providers if practitioners leverage technological advancements to facilitate the development of their critical human skills.

Learning environments for interprofessional education: A micro-ethnography of sociomaterial assemblages in team-based learning

BACKGROUND

Teamwork and collaboration are central to interprofessional education but fostering these attributes in large undergraduate cohorts is challenging.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to examine the complexities of IPE group learning processes by examining how the material and intersubjective intertwine when newly formed interprofessional groups (Chinese medicine, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work) synchronously engaged with face-to-face and online learning in a blended, team-based learning environment.

METHODS

It was a micro-ethnography study using a sociomaterial theoretical lens. We selected two undergraduate interprofessional healthcare student groups within a large scale programme for contrastive video analysis of synchronous spatial and physical configurations, associated talk, and online activity.

RESULTS

Video analysis of evolving physical configurations indicated that Group B was spatially more evenly grouped, and physically orientated to an identifiable leader, despite their blinded peer evaluations indicating distributed leadership. Group A faced a critical event at a public forum leading to spatial disruption breaking into subgroups and isolates; however, this group identified one member as a defined leader in the peer evaluations.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on online scores, we found that peer identification of leaders may influence learning processes but not learning outcomes in the first IPE team meeting. The design of the physical and virtual learning environments contributed to the developing, sociomaterial processes of group cohesion in interprofessional team-based learning.