MED-NET Conference 1997. Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Proceedings 2.1.

Education survey

Report of the reference group on education survey
E. Molina (Parma, Italy)

Aims of the reference group

At the founding meeting of MED-NET in Cagliari we defined the main objective: getting a complete picture of medical education in Europe. This is a complex task. Medical education in Europe varies largely due to different cultures in the European countries. If MED-NET wants to facilitate and stimulate university co-operation, it should provide an exhaustive comparable survey of the variety of curricula in medical education.

Surveying medical education

The aimed survey should not consist of simple listings of disciplines with numbers of lecture hours and practical hours. The key information should concern the arrangement of education, the educational goals and the policy to arrive at professional medical competence. Presenting the curriculum as a whole demonstrating the coherence of its contents rather than in its separate subjects. The survey has to be based on critical indicators of medical education. This means that we first have to answer the question: 'What are critical indicators for the quality of medical education and for the quality of doctors'.

From preliminary discussions it appeared that simply collecting data will not fulfill our aims satisfactorily. Medical education is in almost all cases continuously subject to mutations. This would mean that collecting data by questionnaires and putting them into a database should also be a continuous process to keep the information updated. With the existence of Internet, this method of maintaining databases is inefficient. Internet has proved to be a fully recognised source of information for numerous organisations and institutions. At present almost all faculties of medicine have their own web page or are planning to have one. The contents of these pages are under control of local groups of experts in medical education and therefore the data are correct and reliable. At each faculty of medicine the information is kept up to date. Thus, it is much more efficient to design a search engine to collect data from these pages. However, there is a basic problem, most internet pages of faculties of medicine are part of the home-pages of the university they belong to. The presentation of data is far from consistent and is subject to many different formats which makes it very complicated to collect data properly. Besides critical indicators are found both at the faculty and at university pages. For instance the start of the academic year will be found in the university home page, while education contents are found in the faculty page.

Surveying practical information

For practical use not only the pages of medical faculties have to be compared, but also those of their universities. A student who wants to have information on a planned stay at a faculty of medicine finds general information at the page of the university: libraries, cafeterias, city, international offices with instructions for accommodation, enrolment, etc. For the contents and construction of courses he or she has to consult the faculty page.

Formatting presentation of medical curricula

Linking Internet pages of faculties of medicine as they are at the moment is not useful. It does not allow correct retrieval of data for further analysis. The reference group will develop an optimal format for presentation of data. Presentation of data according to a common format allows collecting data for one central data base. In this way MED-NET may create a real umbrella home page. To achieve this, the reference group will offer a helpdesk for constructing local home pages.

The identification of a common format is subordinated by the definition of the critical indicators for medical education. It has been suggested and accepted during the workshop to use as a first step the indicators of quality as indicated by the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). These indicators may be modified or better implemented with new ones since it is very important to keep in mind the very different end-users of the central data base. The end-users include, besides student, teachers and educational researchers, many other subjects like local, national, European and world organisations and institutions.

A note on the European Medical School Information System (EMSIS) is necessary. The centrally organised database of the system was carefully inspected by a group of international experts, including the author, and it had to be concluded that it is largely incomplete and outdated, whilst the authorisation of data is questionable. Besides specific structures of education, as for example integrated courses cannot, be identified. These deficiencies do not allow us to consider it a useful tool, not even as a critical background, to achieve the aims reported here. However the EMSIS will be linked to the homepage of MED-NET. All participants of the workshop, whether MED-NET members or not, are nvited to collaborate in this action by simply sending an  e-mail to the co-ordinator of the reference group Education Survey:

An interim report will be presented at the second MED-NET Conference in Lille 1998. The activities of the reference group are fully integrated in those of the other reference groups of MED-NET.

Planning the activities of the referencegroup

MED-NET is a three year project and therefore timing of the activities of the reference group is crucial to achieve the aims mentioned. The timing can be summarised as follows:

Services provided by the reference group

The experts of the reference group are capable of offering technical assistance in building up a homepage for all faculties of medicine that want to be present on Internet. Please, address your request to the co-ordinator.

The co-ordinator of the reference group is Enzo Molina. The members of the reference group are: Wolfram Antepohl, Giovanni Ianelli, Roland Mölby, Giorgio Sartor, Sibylle Soboll, Robert Sorbi, Alberto Torres and Sjoert Willemstein.

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