PRE-CLINICAL SKILLS: A competency-based assessment integrated course implemented early in the curriculum to prepare second-year medical students prior to entering clinical settings.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Objective: This Case Study describes the experience of Rovira i Virgili University School of Medicine (URV) with the early introduction of pre-clinical skills learning in the undergraduate medical curricula to monitor and assessing these competencies as a prerequisite for medical students accessing their training in clinical settings. Course Development: A PRE-CLINICAL SKILLS course has been developed to guarantee medical student's performance in managing clinically relevant basic medical sciences to interpret clinical scenarios, to develop technical communication skills and to value professional behavior throughout the first two years of medical education. The set of pre-clinical competencies evaluated in this course as well as the corresponding assessment methods have been established according to an international reference standards review work in collaboration with the regional quality assurance agency. An integrated formative assessment is being used. Course Advantages, Added Values and Outcome Measures: Since the academic year 2009-2010 about 130 students from second-year of Medicine follows this integrated trunk-course while being enrolled in parallel in other core courses as Physiology, Anatomy, and Histology. The program doesn't include lectures but only learning activities to train and monitor the successful achievement of the pre-clinical skills by medical students. A good majority of the participants achieve readiness for start training in clinical settings. As a whole, this course is useful ensuring patient's safety by identifying weaknesses acquisition of pre-clinical skills and predicting medical students who will have difficulty during their clinical training. Conclusions: Reflecting on our experience, we believe that the named course "PRE-CLINICAL SKILLS" overcomes the disadvantages of the traditional teaching methods. Helping students to conceptualize rather than memorize and encouraging them to integrate clinically relevant basic medical sciences concepts and principles by training pre-clinical skills in this competence-based assessment course prior entering into clinical settings.

El concepto de internacionalización en enseñanza superior universitaria y sus marcos de referencia en educación médica / The concept of internationalisation in higher education and its reference frameworks in medical education

La internacionalización de la educación médica es un tema relevante cuya importancia va en aumento con el paso de los años en un mundo cada vez más globalizado. Sorprende, sin embargo, que exista confusión sobre el significado del término «internacionalización» y que se utilice de manera diferente en educación superior y esto se detecta especialmente en los procesos de evaluación de la calidad y acreditación de titulaciones. El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer marcos de referencia para la internacionalización de la educación superior universitaria y de la educación médica en particular. Por ello, se describen un conjunto de estrategias y modelos de referencia para implementar la internacionalización de la educación médica, algunos ejemplos de buenas prácticas, de malinterpretaciones y la iniciativa ASPIRE para reconocer la excelencia. Debido al creciente interés en la acreditación internacional, se pone un énfasis especial en los estándares globales de la World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) para la mejora de la calidad de la educación médica de grado, posgrado y desarrollo profesional continuado, que están siendo introducidos en las agencias de calidad de muchos países para la acreditación de titulaciones de medicina. Propician con ello la movilidad mundial de sus egresados como «médicos internacionales», concepto introducido por la Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG)

The internationalisation of medical education is a matter of significant interest whose importance is growing over the years in an increasingly globalized world. However, there is much confusion about what this term means and surprisingly is applied differently in higher education and this is especially detected in the processes of quality assessment and accreditation of diplomas. The aim of this work is to provide useful benchmarks for the internationalisation of university higher education and medical education diplomas in particular. Hence, it provides a framework of strategies and benchmarks to implement the internationalisation of medical education, as well as examples of good practices, also misinterpretations and in addition the ASPIRE initiative to recognise excellence. Due to the growing interest in international accreditation, a special emphasis to the global standards of the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) to improve the quality of medical education at graduate, posgraduate and continuing education is done. As they are being implemented by quality agencies of many countries for the accreditation of their degrees in medicine. Enabling this way, in addition the global mobility of their medical graduates as «international doctors», a concept introduced by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG)

La excelencia en educación médica: ASPIRE / Excellence in medical education: ASPIRE

La promoción de la excelencia en educación universitaria es un tópico de reciente interés. Algunas enseñanzas de grado y máster, como Ingeniería e Informática, tienen definido su modelo de excelencia internacional, y alcanzar los estándares establecidos supone la obtención de un sello de reconocimiento. La ausencia de mecanismos de reconocimiento de la excelencia en el ámbito de la educación médica a nivel mundial, mediante revisión por pares del mismo ámbito profesional, ha motivado por parte de la Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) la puesta en marcha de diversas acciones para promover la excelencia educativa a nivel internacional en la formación de médicos, odontólogos y veterinarios en facultades de Medicina y Ciencias de la Salud. El objetivo de este trabajo es dar a conocer la iniciativa ASPIRE para el reconocimiento internacional de la excelencia en educación médica y otras iniciativas puestas en marcha por la AMEE, para promover y reconocer la excelencia educativa. Se contextualizan estas acciones con los procesos de acreditación y la existencia de estándares de referencia para la mejora de la calidad de la educación médica de la World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) para la formación médica de grado, posgrado y desarrollo profesional continuo

The promotion of excellence in higher education is a topic that has caused recent interest. Some undergraduate and master programmes, such as engineering and computing have a defined model of international excellence and the achievement of these standards involves obtaining a label of recognition. The absence of mechanisms to recognize excellence in the field of medical education worldwide, through peer reviewers of the same professional field, has motivated the implementation of different initiatives by the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) to promote educational excellence at international level in the training of doctors, dentists and veterinarians in Faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences. The aim of this paper is to introduce ASPIRE Awards for International Recognition of Excellence in Medical Education and other initiatives undertaken by AMEE, to promote and recognize excellence in education. These actions are contextualised with the accreditation processes and the existing global standards for quality improvement in medical education of the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) for medical training at undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development levels