Aims
Concept
The aim of the Year 5 Medical Elective is to provide an opportunity for the student to develop personally and professionally by arranging and performing a project of his/her own choice in any field of medicine including medicine within the wider context of societies at an approved host institution.
Learning Objectives
In planning, executing and writing up the project, students might consider the following broad objectives that might be achieved in the course of planning, carrying out and presenting the project.
To develop generic attributes relevant to a career in medicine. These include qualities of professionalism that include:
- Interpersonal, communication, organisation, time management, and presentation skills;
- Flexibility and adaptability;
- Independent and team working;
- Intellectual capacity, credibility, judgement, intuition;
- Punctuality, setting and meeting deadlines;
- Responsibilities to oneself and others.
To gain experience that will be of potential value in future:
- Health care in an unfamiliar environment
- Considering and assessing the relative risk to the student of a particular project, location or travel arrangement;
- Dealing with issues of ethics as they pertain to clinical and research practice;
- In teaching and learning,
- Evidence of acquisition of specialty focus and relevant experience
- Opportunities to develop career aspirations
To acquire knowledge that will benefit personal development and patient centred care:
- Broadly about medicine and medical practice and specifically based on the topic of the project;
- With reference to the choice of subject and nature of the project about relevant methods, handling and presenting quantitative and qualitative data, setting these in context of world literature;
- Of health care systems with which the student has no prior understanding;
- Of personal strengths and challenges that may be revealed in the course of the planning and execution of the elective.
Specific more task-centred objectives might include:
- Develop individual initiative, communication and organisation skills in identifying suitable project supervisors and making arrangements with host institutions;
- Gain experience in formulating a simple question or hypothesis which can be addressed in the time available for the project;
- Hone skills on how to become familiar with the existing state of knowledge in an area of medicine or medical practice or related topic;
- Learn the importance of planning and time management in carrying out the project and meeting required deadlines for proposal and report submission;
- Learn to work in an independent manner within the constraints of circumstances at the host institution;
- Gain experience in analysing data in the context of existing knowledge and drawing appropriate conclusions;
- Gain experience in writing a report in the format of a scientific or medical paper describing the study which has been carried out.