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Thursday, 09 October 2014 14:43
An Interconnected World
PAUL MULHOLLAND reports on the RCSI’s recent international education forum
With the advent of the age of telecommunications getting in touch has never been easier.
Yet in spite of the plentiful options we now have at our disposal to get in touch with others,
the face-to-face meeting still retains its value.
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the RCSI, Professor Hannah
McGee, told IMN that the International Education Forum, held in the College over the
summer, is a good example of the benefits of meeting colleagues working in different
countries in person.
The RCSI is truly an international facility. In collaboration with Irish Aid, it is the largest
international surgical trainer in sub-Saharan countries.
The forum brought together members of the RCSI international community, most notably
those from its campuses in Bahrain and Malaysia, to meet with Dublin colleagues to discuss
educational and training issues that have developed over the last year. It is the third time
that the forum has been held.
“I think it is building in its success,” according to Prof McGee.
“Knowing there is an annual event has built up momentum and means that people are not
only building, but renewing, acquaintances. They are coming back having planned, for
example, cross site studies last year to talk about how they are working out. It is actually
becoming a more busy and more enriching meeting the more often we have it. It creates a
much richer dialogue than just engaging online, or temporary visits.”
The theme of this year’s forum was “Curriculum development in a transnational context”.
Items discussed included: Reflections on the content of modules within the medical
programme and planning for delivery in 2014/15; review and planning of examination and
assessment; discussions of ‘variances’ – innovations or challenges that were site specific,
and options to learn from or incorporate them; developments in simulation, advanced clinical
consulting, teaching and learning and technology enhanced learning;and progress in faculty
developments and student support.
There was also discussion on opportunities for shared research projects between the
different campuses.
“We initiated this forum three years ago to bring together our teaching staff once a year to
reflect on their teaching, educational and research experience over the last year and to
enable them to innovate in both teaching methods and research in relation to medical
education,” according to Prof McGee.
“Bringing people together allows people to tease out issues, like things that didn’t work or
things that we want to change and so on.”
Integration between the campuses is very important. Unlike many other medical educational
bodies, the RCSI awards students training in its international facilities with the same degree
as its Dublin students. Exams in the three institutions are also held on the same day. This
means a great a deal of coordination is required, making events like the forum very
important.
“Because we work in a virtual learning environment, all of our teaching materials are on
Moodle,” Prof McGee said.
“They can all be instantly transmitted to Bahrain or Malaysia. That is not a problem, so the
same lecture is given in each place in more or less the same sequence over the semester.
We wanted to really interrogate our course content to ensure it worked well on each campus.
And so one of the ways to do that is to refine your teaching using comparative, that you are
enabling students to think comparatively.”
For example, Prof McGee said that smoking rates for women in Ireland are high in
comparison to rates in Bahrain and Malaysia. Having campuses across these three
countries with one curriculum provides an opportunity for teachers and students to compare
health issues, such as smoking, in their country in comparison to others. Similarly, certain
conditions are more prevalent in some countries than others.
She pointed out that in Ireland, cystic fibrosis might be more prevalent, whereas in Bahrain it
might be sickle cell disease, and currently Malaysia is experiencing a serious outbreak of
dengue.
“The international student needs to have the skill set to work with all of these conditions,”
she said.
Multi-culturalism is another key issue that needs to be considered. Many of the RCSI’s
students are from other countries, while the students who attend RCSI Bahrain are now
drawn from more than 30 countries across the globe, including the United States, Australia,
Canada, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
“I think we have an opportunity with our student bodies to highlight cultural issues in a way
that is educational and will make students more culturally sensitive with patients, or indeed
with other healthcare colleagues in the future.”
The Medical Council is currently about to begin the process of assessing RCSI Bahrain for
accreditation, having already accredited the Malaysian campus.
The process in Bahrain has proved controversial due to the accusation that the faculty has
used training hospitals that have breached human rights during the Arab Spring, a
contention that the RCSI has denied.
It has has even been the subject of a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social
Protection debate earlier this year. The College has attracted a lot of criticism for not taking a
strong stand on the issue.
“What we have always tried to do there is maintain a non-sectarian policy,” Prof McGee said.
“So our campuses are completely non-sectarian in the sense that we don’t have, nor would
we want, any information about who students are, what their religion is etc. They get in on
the basis of merit. We just run a campus there in the same way that we do here. We don’t
tolerate any kind of political campaigning. We haven’t had any. But we wouldn’t tolerate it
here either. So if staff here or students here decide to be political on our email system, or on
our Facebook system and so on, we wouldn’t allow that. We equally wouldn’t allow it in
Bahrain, or I don’t think anybody else would either. Back in 2011 it was challenging in terms
of Arab Spring time. But we just kept going. Our sense is that you can’t walk away from
students in the middle of training just because the external environment is tough. And we
have taken a lot of criticism of that.”
Prof McGee expressed the hope that the Medical Council uses the same accreditation
process in Bahrain as it uses on other sites.
Getting back to the the forum, she said the event was a success. Over 120 delegates
attended over the four days, and she said that there was a rewarding exchange of ideas.
“It was a very productive event and one which has strengthened links between all the
different campuses.”