The influence of different curriculum designs on students' dropout rate: a case study.

The relationship between students' withdrawal and educational variables has generated a considerable number of publications. As the explosion of information in sciences and integration theories led to creating different curriculum designs, it has been assumed that differences among designs explain academic success and, therefore, students' retention. However, little attention has been given to examine explicitly how diverse designs influence dropout rates in practice, which questions if decisions to reform curricula are sufficiently informed. This article describes our curriculum reform, which exposes our former and current curriculum designs as having had dissimilar dropout percentages. Furthermore, we aimed to explore the influence of different curriculum designs on students' dropout rates. The conclusion is that dropout variations may be explained not only because of the curriculum design itself, but also because of the power relationship changes between teachers and students that brought out the design change. Consequently, more research is needed to fully understand the political implications of different curriculum designs and their influence on dropout rates.

El nuevo trívium en la formación médica más allá de la comunicación médico-paciente / The new trivium in medical training beyond the doctor-patient communication

Uno de los elementos innovadores de los currículos de medicina en las últimas décadas es el énfasis en la comunicación médico-paciente. Sin embargo, las competencias comunicativas van más allá; implican habilidades cognitivo-lingüísticas que soporten la escucha activa, la lectura, la escritura y la oralidad en el contexto del aprendizaje y práctica de la medicina. Creemos que limitar la enseñanza de la comunicación al encuentro médico-paciente deja de lado los procesos cognitivos y las manifestaciones lingüísticas fundamentales para asegurar el éxito comunicativo del médico dentro de la sociedad. En otras palabras, además de las técnicas para una mejor comunicación, las habilidades cognitivo-lingüísticas resultan esenciales en el momento de elegir, organizar, clasificar y categorizar la información que se ha de brindar tanto al paciente y su familia como a la comunidad médica para el mejoramiento de la salud de individuos y poblaciones. En este artículo pretendemos argumentar por qué es importante el aprendizaje integral de las habilidades comunicativas, ejemplificando el caso del nuevo trívium del currículo de medicina de la Universidad del Rosario, la cual constituye un espacio propicio para que el estudiante desarrolle habilidades cognitivo-lingüísticas para la comunicación clínica en su comunidad científica.

One of the innovative elements of medical curricula in recent decades is the emphasis on the doctor-patient communication. However, communicative competences go further; they involve cognitive-linguistic skills that support active listening, reading, writing and orality in the context of learning and practicing medicine. We believe that limiting the teaching of communication to the doctor-patient encounter leaves the cognitive processes and the fundamental linguistic manifestations aside to ensure the communicative success of the doctor within the society. In other words, in addition to the techniques for better communication, cognitive-linguistic skills are essential at the time of choosing, organizing, classifying and categorizing the information that must be provided both to the patient and his family and to the medical community for the improvement of the health of individuals and populations. In this article, we intend to argue why it is important to comprehensively learn the communication skills, exemplifying the case of the new trivium of the medicine curriculum of Universidad del Rosario, which constitutes a favorable space for the students to develop cognitive-linguistic skills for the clinical communication in their scientific community.