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The medical degree programme: Plan for development work ready

The medical degree programme needs to be ready for the future and is therefore facing a major vision and strategy process. The roadmap for this process, which will run until 2019, is now in place. A wide range of stakeholders – from both AU and external – will be involved along the way.

At AU, there is a growing awareness of how the degree programmes orientate themselves towards the outside world, business and industry, and the future. This is also true of Health, where the medical degree programme is the first to come under the microscope. 


The medical degree programme is very much directed toward a future career as a medical doctor, and a large part of the degree programme already takes place in a clinical environment. But the question is whether we sufficiently equip our graduates with relevant and future-oriented competences. Are the coming medical doctors also well enough equipped to be innovative; will they be able to contribute to the development of the healthcare sector; or to new medical technology; and how do they function in a larger social perspective?

 

These are some of the questions that the vision process will provide answers to. 

The outcome is completely open 

Between now and the summer, department heads, directors of studies, board of studies, the teaching committees, course organisers and coordinators, lecturers and students, the degree programme's employer panel and also CESU (Centre for Health Sciences Education), will be invited to take a bird’s eye view of the medical degree programme with a view towards the future. The discussions will form the basis of the formulation of a vision and a strategic foundation.

 

"The outcome of the process is still completely open. I look forward to the input from the academic environment and the many stakeholders, and to formulating a collective vision, so we have some guiding principles for the degree programme. We will then collate this with our current degree programme. It is first there that it will transpire whether we simply need some adjustments, or whether a bigger revision is required," says Charlotte Ringsted, who is vice-dean for education at Health and is heading the process in close collaboration with the director of studies for medicine, Per Höllsberg.

New academic regulations come into force in 2019 

In addition to the dialogue with the many stakeholders, the medical degree programmes at other universities will also be taken into consideration, together with the literature on research into medical degree programmes. Based on this, an inspiration catalogue will be drawn up for the board of studies' ongoing work to establish the degree programme structure and the specific content of the courses. This work will begin in 2018.

A proposal for the new academic regulations will be ready by the end of 2018. The new academic regulations will be sent for consultation to e.g. the faculty and department management teams and the Dean's Office as well as various government agencies and liaison committees, including among others the Management Forum for Collaboration between the University and Region, other universities and the Danish Patient Safety Authority. The plan is for the new academic regulations to come into force in the summer of 2019.

A similar vision process will be started in the course of 2017 for the other degree programmes at Health.


Contact

Vice-dean for Education Charlotte Ringsted
Health, Aarhus University
Mobile: (+45) 9350 8222
Email: charlotte.ringsted@au.dk