Thank You Claire so as Claire has said
I'm the programme director for medicine
and what I'm going to aim to do is to
give you a brief overview of what the
course looks like at Birmingham I just
have to issue a bit of a a warning that
medicine doesn't stand still and neither
does the University of Birmingham so
we're always changing things improving
things so what I tell you today may not
be precisely what you would get when you
come here
so we think of the programme in all phases
so years 1 & 2 is your foundation it's
making sure that you have the knowledge
and the skills that you need to to enter
the more clinical phase of the programme
in year 3 so within years 1 & 2 students
go to general practice to see patients
but the main patient contact starts in
year 3 and that's about getting more
knowledge and skills around managing
patients and using the knowledge that
they have learned in phase 1 and
bringing that through
year four or phase three is around
broadening the professional base looking
at lots of specialties and and widening
students knowledge and understanding of
all the parts of Medicine and in the
final year of what we aim to do is make
sure that students are really well
prepared for starting work at the end of
the year and are able to manage people
who are both well chronically ill and
acutely ill
so year 1 and 2 very much the
same structure each main semester is
made up of three biological science
modules shown here in grey and one
module that we call medicine in society
which is a combination of ethics and law
public health psychology sociology and
disability and in each semester students
study those subjects in a system based
way and at the end of each semester
there are a set of exams alongside
modules that are learned online and in
the medical school is community based
medicine this is once a fortnight
students go out from the second week of
the course to general practices across
the West Midlands and there they start
to interact with patients and acquire
the skills that are needed to be a
doctor on the weeks that they are not in
community-based medicine students
undertake professional academic skills
which is a case based learning approach
acquiring lots of the academic skills
that you need to be a doctor and Anatomy
is taught both within the biological
science modules but also alongside
in region and Anthony so that students
have a good sense of how everything fits
together year two looks very similar in
structure but obviously different
subjects are studied but the same format
of teaching and assessment in year three
students go out to hospitals and they
spend 13 weeks in one hospital before
Christmas and 13 weeks after Christmas
in a second hospital
and this is around acquiring the skills
of taking history examining patients
understanding investigations and
learning the skills that you need to be
able to ascertain what's going on when a
patient comes into a hospital or is seen in
in general practice or in the outpatient
clinic students also study the clinical
Sciences which are things like pathology
hematology biochemistry immunology
alongside their Hospital experience and
they go to a third general practice
again one day a fortnight looking at the
same sorts of things that they're doing
in hospital but from a primary care
perspective before Christmas students do
an evidence-based medicine and research
methods course and after Christmas a
group project where they look at the
evidence for an area of health
improvement our students have a clinical
procedural skills passport which is an
app which enables them to when they've
seen experts doing a skill and they then
had a go in simulation when
they're felt to be ready they then will
do the skill for real with patients and
will be observed and they get their
skills signed off in the app and in year
five we do some testing of some of the
skills then the end of the year the
students have a multiple choice exam and
an objective structured clinical exam
and we use that format at the end of
every clinical year so year three four
and five and it is in fact the format
that's going to be used for the national
medical licensing assessment that will
come in in 2024
in year four students undertake a
rotation of
subjects so not everyone is doing the same
things at the same time and this
consists as you can see of Psychiatry
with neurology surgery and perioperative
care which includes two weeks at the
Royal orthopedic hospital in Birmingham
and an 18 week module on specialty
medicine so this is looking at a wide
range of different specialties in
medicine and at the end of the year the
students have their exams and then they
have a five-week elective where they can
go anywhere in the world or in the UK
that they wish to again they will go to
a fourth general practice where they
will do a teaching project and across
the year they're involved in the
quality improvement project which they
present at the end of the year as a
poster in year 5 students again rotate
through subjects they will do a
three-week selected career experience at
the beginning of the year and then will
either rotate through three five-week
modules or a 15 week module first and
then do whichever one they haven't done
second so are pediatrics obstetrics and
gynecology and a five-week attachment in
general practice occur in our final year
and a 15-week acute real patient and
this is very much what comes in through
the front door of a hospital and so
students are very well prepared for
starting work the August after they
finish and at the end of the year after
the exams students undertake a clinical
assistantship where it's really a time
for polishing up all their skills making
sure that they are as well prepared as
we can possibly ensure in time to take
the the world of work on and I forgot to
say that in years three four and five
our students are placed in groups in
their placement with a Senior Academy
tutor who meets them every week or every
fortnight to support their learning make
sure that they are getting the
opportunities that they need
so what drives teaching and learning for
the MBChB well in common with all UK
medical schools we have to make sure
that we meet the outcomes for graduates
by the end of the programme so the
students have a set of outcomes set by
the General Medical Council who
regulates all medical degree programmes in
the UK and there are a set of outcomes
that the students have to meet and
that's how we decide what we're going to
teach so you will find you may already
have found going to other open days is
actually all medical schools are fairly
similar
nobody is suddenly going to say do you know
what we're going to be the medical
school that doesn't teach the heart no
one's going to do that but it's how we
teach that makes the difference
so at Birmingham in years one and two
teaching takes place in some large group
lectures but also rather more small
group tutorials with about 15 students
in what we call an m for medicine group and
learning is inquiry based learning case
based learning and some problem-based
learning but we're not a problem-based
learning course for the five year
programme of course inevitably there is
private study and I've already spoken
about community based medicine in years
three four and five students learn not
just from doctors but from the whole
multi professional team and this is
incredibly important because medicine is
a team sport and you need to understand
what other people do what their
contribution is and where you fit in we
also have in each of our hospitals a set
of clinical teaching fellows who are
junior doctors who take a time out from
their training to get a teaching
qualification and they spend their time
facilitating and teaching the students
if you were in Birmingham today as we
would normally be on an an open day
that's where you'd be you're obviously
not there at the moment but the reason
for putting that up is that right
next door to us is the Queen Elizabeth
Hospital Birmingham and we don't just
send students there one of the strengths
of the Birmingham course is that we have a
lot of trusts that we send our students
to so you get a really good experience
and you learn a lot about how different
trusts work and what different hospitals
are like right from rural in
Herefordshire to inner-city and that I
think gives you a really good
opportunity to choose where you want to
work afterwards and I haven't put them
on this map because it would look a bit
like chickenpox but we work with over a
hundred and twenty general practices as
well
like all medical schools we use
simulation a lot this is a very safe way
to learn you're doing things as if for
real but there's no patient on the end
so if you do the wrong thing no one gets
harmed and we use simulation in years
three and four somewhat but mainly in
year five so what would being at
Birmingham offer you we believe that a
Birmingham graduate is someone who
people like to work with because they're
practical sensible they have outstanding
ethics they're good communicators
they're compassionate and they're
knowledgeable and the feedback that we
get from the postgraduate medical world
is that they like having Birmingham
doctors because we are able to get on
with things and know what we're doing
we would say that we aim to make sure
that people leave us with a thirst for
knowledge and wanting to learn
throughout their careers we want our
students our graduates to be able to go
into any specialty that they want to not
to be confined by our undergraduate
training and we're very proud of the
fact that we're one of the best medical
schools in the country for postgraduate
qualifications
as I said at the beginning we are always
changing one of the things that we are
very keen to do is to listen to what our
students tell us we have fantastic
students we have superb student
representatives and we listen and change
our course accordingly so I'm now going
to hand over to Pippa Dodd who is one of
our fifth year students just about to