Medical Education 2020

The Med-School The Teacher The Student

Why Change? – a 20-year old in 2020

• Used a computer before starting kindergarten

• Spend 20,000 hrs. watching interactive TV and movies

• Send 200,000 emails/texts

• Uses a technology no one today has predicted in 1980

These young people were born into a digital world where they expect to be able to create, consume, remix, and share creations.

-PEW Internet Project

How will you engage them?

How will you know what they are learning?

Why MBBS? - The Same Old Reasons…• “I’m keen to be a doctor”• See a doctor as – a professional, – an important member of society,– commanding a position of respect

• Motivations for studying medicine, – desire to help people, altruism, – to make a difference– to earn money, power and have a good Life

Who? The Student Characteristics• Most will be high achieving, type-A personalities

intense goal-oriented individuals with a sustained drive and competitiveness over-critical, demanding, focusing on the negative aspects impatient with imperfections

• have excelled at school academically, • enjoy music, arts, &/or sport • have held positions of responsibility at school

On Gender & Heutagogy

• increase in the number of women entering medical school in the last two decades

• this trend is likely to continue in 2020• students may embrace Heutagogy* – demand more control over their learning – wish greater influence over the course design – expect more autonomy in their learning

* Heutagogy = self determined learning

The Status of Medical Profession

• “Noble status” is being eroded = less Prestige• the diminishing respect given to doctors • “job” is all-consuming and life beyond

medicine is limited• High incidences of alcohol abuse, divorce &

suicide rates among Doctors • These may dissuade prospective students

Competencies Needed For Tomorrow

• greater reliance on information technology• Computers and the Internet (Web-2.0) are

shaping the society of the future• Doctors of the future will have to

acknowledge and embrace this technology• much of the medical course may be computer

and Internet based (‘i-pad medicos’)

Competencies Needed …• to distinguish between valid, useful and

correct information and copious amounts of misleading material in the Internet

• Tele-medicine skills• medical students of the future will need to be

literate in the language of genetics• In future, a doctor will be expected to stop the

disease before it develops (primordial prevention)

Core Focus of Future Doctors• to be – caring, compassionate,– honest, – an effective and productive communicator, – with integrity and – an ability to develop personally and – be a lifelong learner

• SOME THINGS REMAIN THE SAME…

Thank you…