Medical Education : Developing a Curriculum for Practice

by Fish, Della; Coles, Colin

• ISBN13: 9780335216239
• ISBN10: 0335216234
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-01
• Publisher: Open University Press

Summary

What are the contemporary problems facing curriculum designers and developers? What are the key questions that ought to be addressed with regard to curriculum design for medical practice? How might a curriculum for practice in medical education be developed? Medical Education offers a detailed response to these questions and shows what form a curriculum for practice should take and how one can be developed. These ideas are presented in a highly practical and readable account that is essential reading for those involved in educating the doctors of the future and for policy makers in the field of medical education. It also offers useful advice for those in related fields of health care.The authors show that recent developments of curricula for postgraduate doctors have been founded on the misguided view (promoted by politicians and policy makers) that medical practice is routine, straightforward and able to be reduced to simple protocols that professionals must learn and follow. In this view, doctors are technicians who need merely to be trained through a simple curriculum. In contrast, this book shows that the practice of medicine as experienced by working doctors is complex, uncertain and unpredictable. This requires a curriculum that provides the opportunity to learn to exercise professional judgement and make decisions based on practical wisdom.

Author Biography

Della Fish is Professor of Education (postgraduate medicine) at King’s College London and works independently as a researcher and consultant. She has also worked part time as an education advisor in the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Postgraduate Deanery for Medical and Dental Education. She has published in medical education and contributed widely to health care literature.

Colin Coles is an education professor at the University of Winchester. Having taught in schools and universities, he became Education Advisor to the Wessex Deanery for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education. He also works as an independent consultant, running workshops and undertaking research and writing. He has published widely within the field of medical education.

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
About the authors	xi
Introduction	1	(8)
PART 1 Starting points	9	(18)
1 Developing rigorous curricula for medical practice in the twenty-first century: a matter of urgency	11	(16)
PART 2 The bases of curriculum design for medical practice	27	(172)
2 The practice of curriculum design: its principles, processes, components and logic	29	(27)
3 Clarifying curriculum aims: the practice of education, its nature and expertise	56	(25)
4 Clarifying values: professionalism in practice - stories from the field of medicine	81	(23)
5 Analysing the context: the nature of practice in medicine - a survey of the field	104	(22)
6 Clarifying the content: the nature of professional knowledge in medicine	126	(21)
7 Selecting appropriate educational strategies: how doctors learn to practise	147	(21)
8 Getting assessment right: identifying and recording doctors' educational achievements in the clinical setting	168	(21)
9 From problematic to procedural matters: setting the regulations for supporting and managing the curriculum on the ground	189	(10)
PART 3 Curriculum development in medicine: a way forward	199	(44)
10 Shaping an evaluation policy: some principles, values and practices for developing and refining a curriculum	201	(24)
11 Some principles of change: the problems of curriculum development and ways forward	225	(10)
12 Developing a curriculum for postgraduate medicine at the local, intermediate and national level	235	(8)
Appendix: A response to the consultation on Curriculum for the Foundation Years in Postgraduate Medico! Education and Training (November 2004)	243	(6)
References	249	(6)
Index	255