Medical Education
Pedagogy is the science of Education, of the learning process on which our growth is based. In particular, the Standing Committee on Medical Education’s aim is to sustain and support the future Doctors’ work, in order to improve their professional and human qualities.
We think that the continuative comparison between students and professors is essential to a complete learning process; as a consequence, we organize several local activities, through the work of the Local Officers on Medical Education (LOME), coordinated on a National Level by the National Officer on Medical Education (NOME).
We promote working groups deepening the understanding of the reformation of the Italian Residency Program, trying to inform in a proper and non-political way all Medical Students; we prepared a Booklet distributed in all SISM Local Committees, aiming to spread the knowledge on the argument. Moreover, we are working on the building of an Italian Residency Database, and we are actively collaborating with our friends of the Transnational Project IFMSA “Residency Database”.
As Medical Students, nowadays, we have the opportunity to deal with extremely different problems. Sometimes, we have to cope with situations that are not strictly Medical; that’s why we do not only need professional and technique knowledge, but also experiences, abilities and relation skills to form our critical and ethical deontology. Consequently, we organize, in collaboration with the universities, ECTS Courses and Conferences on several themes, such as: Music Therapy, Acupunture and Non-conventional medicine, First Aid, theory and practice of Sewing techniques, Foreign languages Courses, computer science, Bioethics, theory and practice of blood drawing, electrocardiography, Pain Medicine, deaf language, Clown Therapy and even more.
Moreover, we consider Medical Students as an important bridge between “young” and “old” people. In fact, we have, more or less, the same age as Highschool’s students, but we have a higher knowledge, due to our studies; so, we organize Peer Education Courses that are not frontal lessons, but opportunities to debate and share with young people, on themes like Alcohol Abuse, Use of Drugs, HIV and STD prevention.
Since several years, following the steps of our Professional and Research Exchange Program, we have activated a National Exchange Program (Clerkship Italiane), in order to allow students to stay for 4 weeks in one ward of interest that can be chosen between the best in Italy.
Again, thanks to the IFMSA Network, we give our students the opportunity to participate to Summer and Winter Schools all over the world, to deepen, directly on the best field, their knowledge in specific branches of Medicine, such as Tropical medicine or Diving Medicine.
We took to Italy a child-oriented initiative, the Teddy Bear Hospital, Transnational Project of IFMSA. It’s a Hospital for illed Teddy bears, where children can see and experiment a medical visit and all the hospitalization process, from the diagnosis to the end of the cure process, without being patients themselves. In this way, we bring the medical world closer to the one of the Paediatric Patients, dulling the “White Coat Fear”. At the same time, future doctors can learn how to approach paediatric patients.
We founded, and we are now managing, Project SMiLe X, Transnational Project of IFMSA and winner of the Rex Crossley Award as Best IFMSA Project of 2007, a Clown Therapy Project now running in Italy, Brasil, Ecuador, Perù and Catalunia. We do it because we know that laughing and playing are fundamental, not only in approaching children and old people, but also in representing a therapy to reduce the duration of the hospitalization and of the treatment process.
Medical Education: our Education is up to us, let’s build it!
