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.
Project
A project is defined as a discrete piece of work conceived with guidance by and for the student. Student choice is the fundamental principle. The project may take several forms, for example and not exclusively:
- A short clinical or laboratory research study, testing a hypothesis;
- An evaluation of a service or specific intervention;
- A detailed and extensive review of the literature on a topic with illustrative case-based examples;
- An audit of a service or component of a service comparing with accepted standards;
- A standard setting observational study from which audits might follow;
- A survey to establish levels of knowledge, or skills, behaviours, values, beliefs about a specific topic;
- An educational project that produces material to facilitate, teach or train the students, staff, patients or the wider public.
Examples of previous elective reports on these project types is available either from the Polwarth library or the section on previous electives.
The University of Aberdeen does not consider it appropriate for students to carry out clinical clerkships as electives. Bluntly, a simple description of how a student spent his or her time on ward rounds, in clinics or the community and in travel will not satisfy programme requirements resulting in a “fail”. This regulation does not undermine or attempt to diminish the potential value of such experiences. Neither does it preclude students undertaking clinical work whilst carrying out the project – gaining clinical or other relevant practical experience related to the project and the location in which it takes place is encouraged. Rather, it reflects the intention of the MBChB Programme to broaden the undergraduate experience to include a relatively major piece of independent work.
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.