↑Medical education and training in the 1950s 1950年代醫科生培訓 ↓Students have been receiving POCUS trainings since 2022. 自2022年起，所有 醫科生均需學習 POCUS的臨床應用。 Teaching for the Future HKUMed’s graduates have been the backbone of medical and healthcare in Hong Kong throughout the Faculty’s history, with the Department as a key educator. For nearly a century, the MBBS curriculum was relatively unchanged. But in the 1990s there was growing realisation that it had become impossible for students to master the vast amount of new knowledge emerging from scientific enquiry. Rather, they needed skills for lifelong training and for extracting the most relevant information. Future doctors also needed to know how to take care of themselves so they could be better equipped to serve their patients. These realisations resulted in several major changes, starting with the introduction of problembased learning in 1997 and followed by the six-year curriculum in 2012 and the Enrichment Year for third-year students in 2016. The Department played a leading role in helping the Faculty to implement these changes, even as student numbers increased significantly from 150 in 1997 to 295 in 2023. More recent changes have centred around new technologies to enhance doctors’ capacities at the bedside. From 2022, all clinical-year students are provided with point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS), a revolutionary device that allows for ultrasounds on the spot with patients (otherwise, it can take weeks and even months to book a traditional ultrasound appointment). Telemedicine training has been introduced so students learn how to remotely monitor patients who may have mobility issues or are required to stay at home, for instance due to a pandemic. And virtual reality is used to train students in clinical pharmacology, prescription safety and the like, giving them valuable exposure that might otherwise be out of reach because students are not licensed to prescribe medications. Clerkships are also being updated. In 2019, specialist outpatient clinics were opened up for undergraduate teaching. Recently, the Specialty Clerkship – the last function of the medical curriculum – was adjusted to have students go through different subspecialties on a weekly basis. The 140+ CORE Curriculum will also soon introduce the Mega Clerkship which combines the junior and senior clerkships for more indepth and comprehensive patient cases. And tablet-based examinations are coming that will improve efficiency. ‘These changes make our students better prepared for the future of medicine. But they still align with what we believe are the hallmarks of a “good medical doctor”: clinical knowledge, clinical skills, professionalism and ethics. We deliver all of that in our teaching,’ Professor Tse said. 11 HKUMed News Winter 2023
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