gms | German Medical Science

GMS Journal for Medical Education

Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung (GMA)

ISSN 2366-5017

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Be Prepared - Teaching Students what they need to know: An overview of the 11th Graz Conference on medical education

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  • corresponding author Richard März - Medical University of Vienna, Core Unit for Medical Education, Science and International Relations, Vienna, Austria

GMS Z Med Ausbild 2007;24(3):Doc146

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/journals/zma/2007-24/zma000440.shtml

Received: May 31, 2007
Published: August 15, 2007

© 2007 März.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Overview

How can we be certain students are learning what we think is important and hopefully are teaching them? This question seems elementary but it goes to the heart of a problem, which is certainly not trivial as the 2007 instalment of the Graz conference on medical education, held May 3-5 in Salzburg, proved once again.

Some of the suggestions were:

  • Provide a well-structured curriculum (Grande, Mayo Clinic)
  • Educate the educators (Fischer, Munich)
  • Give your examination system a radical overhaul (Schuwirth, Maastricht)
  • Have an accreditation body examine both process and outcome (Fulton, Vienna and Nake, Salzburg).

About 50 participants from 9 countries discussed these and other approaches in lectures, workshops, a poster party and a lot of unstructured time. The last morning focused on the methods of examination used at all Austrian schools of medicine and veterinary medicine. A list of questions similar to one that might be employed in an accreditation process was answered by the officials in charge at each institution and then discussed by a panel as well as by the audience.

The detailed program as well as the presentations given can be found at the conference web-site: http://www.mededu.meduniwien.ac.at/grako07/index.php.