Projects in SCOME

Teaching Geriatrics in Medical Education (TeGeME)
Residency Database (RDb)
Curriculum Database (CD)
Influence of Studying on Students' Health (ISSH)
Implementing the Global Standards
Book-Aid

Teaching Geriatrics in Medical Education Step II (TeGeME II)

TeGeME II is a joint study by the Ageing and Life Course Programme of the World Health Organization (WHO, Headquarters in Geneva) and the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations (IFMSA).

Background:

Population ageing is a world-wide phenomenon. Due to increasing life expectancy and decreasing total fertility rates - people have fewer children and live much longer - the population in most countries ages. Presently, there are about 590 million people aged 60 and over living on our planet. By the year 2025 this number will have risen to 1.2 billion, of which 75% will be living in the developing world. The oldest age group (age 80 and over) is increasing the fastest: 200% within the next 20 years. Ageing has also a gender dimension; women outlive men in nearly all societies; thus in very old age women outnumber men 2:1. As a consequence, health care systems need to prepare their primary health care personnel as well as all other levels of health care staff for this societal change. The various aspects of ageing need to be more fully incorporated into the training curriculum of all health professions. Disciplines like geriatrics and gerontology need to be further developed and regularly included in medical and health education.

Aim:

Attitudes impact patient care and influence doctor-patient relationships and ultimately, the quality of health care provided. With the information obtained in this survey, WHO and IFMSA aim to identify links between attitudes of medical students in various countries and their medical training with regard to older people. The results will be used to raise awareness of the international public health community about the importance of integrated training of medical students in the field of old age care that would lead to positive attitudes and therefore, improved health care for older people.

Methods:

The study will be carried out in all NMOs that would like to participate. In those schools that agree to participate, medical students in clinical years will be asked to complete an established questionnaire. Timeframe for the project: March 2003- March 2004.

Expected outcome

A report will be published. The national and local focal points will be acknowledged in this publication.

Status of the project: SCOME Project
Project Coordinator: Nikola Borojevic, Croatia (mail)

Residency Database

The Residency Database project's aim is to facilitate international medical students and young doctors to reach information concerning the residency system and application procedure to different countries of the world. Furthermore, it provides to the Residency Database site's visitors with the chance to compare the advantages and the disadvantages of the many different countries' residency systems, along with the opportunity for further research in this field.

Executive summary

The whole idea is about the construction of a Residency Database (RDb), where every medical student and young doctor will find information about the residency system, the financial state and the application procedure for a residency position in many different countries. The importance of this project lies to the fact that a continuous growing number of medical scientists from all over the world desire to specialize or sub-specialize in a medical field outside his/her own country and they face a lot of difficulties in finding the proper source of information.The Residency Database project will facilitate these people to have an easy and quick access to the relevant information.

Project's structure

There are two groups of people who work on the realisation of the project:the Project's Participants and the International Coordinating Team.

What is the Project's Participants role?

A Project Participant can be any of you who would like to fill out the Residency Database (RDb) Questionnaire with the information concerning your country. The RDb Questionnaire is the cornerstone of the RDb project and it requires information and references concerning the residency system, the financial state and the application procedure for a residency position in your country. After filling out the RDb Questionnaire and sending it to us, it will be evaluated for its adequacy of the provided information and the stating of references by the International Coordinating Team. Then, the provided information will be uploaded to the Residency Database web-site.

What does the International Coordinating Team do?

1. finalise the RDb questionnaire
2. gather the completed questionnaires
3. evaluate the received data
4. promote the project

How can I participate in the project?

If you are interested in learning more or participating in the project (by completing the Residency Database Questionnaire with the required information concerning your country), please send us an e-mail to: residency_database@yahoo.com. Your contribution to the project is not only highly desired but also necessary for its realisation!

How can I participate in the International Coordinating Team?
 

If you are interested in playing an active role to the RDb project's materialisation, please send an e-mail to
ifmsa-rdb-subscibe@yahoogroups.com in order to be subscribed in our working list and to participate in the discussion. There your opinions counts!

http://www.helmsic.gr/residency-database/index.php

Status of the project: IFMSA Transnational Project, adopted in March Meeting 2003 in Estonia
Project Coordinators:

    Panos Vouzounis - pana10@cytanet.com.cy

    Ignacio Zapardiel Gutierrez - ignacio.zapardi@vodafone.es

Curriculum Database

The aim of the project is to offer an opportunity to medical students to find information about the ways of studying and teaching medicine in other faculties and countries.
 

The increasing need for information on different medical universities on a world-wide scale without the hassle of using multiple servers in different countries. Moreover the opportunity for NOMEs to get a comparison of different curricula within their nations and across counties; thus using this data to help improve their curricula. One benefit of this project is that the information being provided includes both an official and students' point of view.

We think that, among students, there is a need of knowledge in the field of medical curricula. CD will be a tool that's going to help:

• student representatives to find out details about better and more developed medical education systems and,
• all medical students that intend to take part in a student exchange programme.

CD will be on the SCOME homepage, so that any medical student from all over the world can access it. First it should consist of the information gathered from the NMOs that are IFMSA members. In the long run, we would like to extend the CD to NMOs who are not involved in SCOME and to countries that are not IFMSA members. This process is subject to change if new and improved technical methods are found.

http://CurriculumDatabase.osmcluj.ro/

Status of the project: IFMSA Transnational Project
Project Coordinator: Vlad Gavrila, Romania (contact form)

Influence of Studying on Students' health

The aim of the project is to determine the level of possible deterioration of health among medical and non-medical students. Studying, organization and curricula could be determined as stressogenous noxa. The project aims to establish the level of correlation between countries, types of education and type of studies in relation to stress related diseases. Project is based on 25-question survey, which are statistically analyzed and compared to other countries involved. New approach includes PBL and non-medical students. Results can be used to help change medical curricula and improve education, introduce need for stress management at medical faculties as well as encourage pro-active approach of medical students on student issues.

Project is based on 25-question survey, which are statistically analyzed and compared to other countries involved. New approach includes PBL and non-medical students. Results can be used to help change medical curricula and improve education, introduce need for stress management at medical faculties as well as encourages pro-active approach of medical students on student issues. The results suggest high level of stress, and therefore we will organize Stress management courses for interested students, as well as Time management courses.

Every interested student, medical school or NMO can participate. You should contact International coordinator, who will help you organize the survey, and collect the data when you are finished. The results will be compared on an international level. The results may help in changing curricula, advocacy and student involvement.

Status of the project: IFMSA Transnational Project
Project Coordinator: Vlatka Jurkovic, Croatia (mail)

Implementing the Global Standards in Basic Medical Education (WFME)

Considering how rapid medicine and education practices are changing it is not suprising seeing that many medical faculties around the world are exercising variable education systems. No matter how different these systems are each of them aims reaching the ideal one and preparing the medical students for their medical life in an enviroment of quality. But are they successful at this? We don't know, as „only a minority of the more than 1500 medical schools worldwide are subjected to external evaluation and accreditation procedures" as stated in the report of World Federation for Medical Education on Quality Development in Basic Medical Education-WFME International Guidelines.

Medicine itself is universal and requires a universal identity to work on it. We will be doctors for all. How will this be managed if we have students away from internalization and international standards?

World Federation for Medical Education answers these questions with their report on Quality Development in Basic Medical Education-WFME International Guidelines. Obviously, these standards are to provide an enviroment of thinking and working on medicine and an enviroment of integrated world just as medicine requires.

Medical education is one of the essential topics of IFMSA. One of the main intention of this is to make the medical education that we get as medical students more qualified. Being an international federation we could see world integration and to listen to international comments is a „must" in medicine. And these standards serve as a shortcut to reach those comments. Entegration in medicine and medical education is the only way to make us, medical students the future doctors for all not for a region. As future doctors we like to do our best for our own education and see the project of disseminating those standards one of the ways to achieve this.

To achieve changes in medical education the demand may come from students and/or administrative bodies. The methods of this project are set as the keys to solve probable problems that would affect the course of dissemination of the report of WFME among administrative bodies and students.The goals and objectives of this project are based on making both parties take the initiative by dissemination for implementing international standards.

The standards: download as doc-file

Status of the project: IFMSA Transnational Project, adopted in March Meeting 2003 in Estonia
Project Coordinator:Nergiz Dagoglu, Turkey (mail) and Mohamed Al-Bahrawy, Egypt (mail)

Book-Aid

The Book Aid Project was established within IFMSA's Standing Committee on Medical Education in spring 1994, when we realized that the lack of basic teaching and learning equipment, especially books, was a problem much more relevant to students in many countries than e.g. medical education reform. The idea is to collect second hand and new medical textbooks and atlases among medical students and others in Western countries and to ship them to places where they would be needed. Currently we are/have-establishing partnerships with the Balkan countries.

Status of the Project: SCOME project
Project Coordinator: Regina Coleman, USA (mail)