The Department of Medical Education was founded in 2015 and serves the Faculty in all matters educational – through teaching, mentoring and research. Three of us are experienced medical doctors and four are trained educationalists at Masters and PhD level. We are partners with all Faculty colleagues, as well as those in the wider University, who are committed to educational excellence and innovation. Our aim is to achieve a world-class standard of medical education in the Faculty.
Teaching
The Department is responsible for the clinical skills training of first and second year medical students, as well as their weekly placements in Primary Care clinics. We are pioneering innovative programmes for medical students, e.g. a ‘Learning Success Programme’ and a longitudinal information literacy course. We conduct regular short courses in Medical Education: a yearly five day course for medical residents as well as shorter courses on demand, e.g. in assessment. We are about to launch a Postgraduate Diploma in Health Professions Education and have begun work on an electronic exam question bank for the Faculty.
Mentoring and support
We serve as a resource for the Faculty and University on educational matters by serving on a number of relevant committees, as well as supporting and leading task teams and working groups – for example in the areas of eLearning, student support and programme evaluation. We carry out regular internal moderation of the Faculty’s exam papers and OSCEs. We were instrumental in the establishment of the Faculty’s Student Support Office and also oversee it. Outside the University we contribute to the national Medical Internship Training programme, supervise clinical audits done by second year medical students in Primary Care clinics, and provide training for clinic nurses.
Research
Since its establishment the Department has been active in research with increasing numbers of publications and conference presentations to our credit. We are currently aiming to publish in high end medical education journals (e.g. Medical Teacher and Academic Medicine). The Department recently completed an in-depth review of the undergraduate MBBS programme and is beginning to publish from that research. We are about to start on a similar review of the six Masters of Medicine (MMed) programmes. We regularly serve on review panels of international journals.
Partnerships
We have working relationships with universities outside the country, e.g. the University of Stellenbosch and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the University of Zimbabwe and Maastricht University in the Netherlands. We are in regular contact with the Botswana Health Professions Council and the Ministry of Health and Wellness on educational matters.