Presentation
In accordance with current European Directives, the duration of the Master's Degree programme in Medicine and Surgery is 6 years, consisting of at least 5,500 hours of theoretical and practical teaching carried out at or under the supervision of the University. The single-Cycle Master's Degree programme in Medicine and Surgery requires a total of 360 University Credits (ECTS), spread over six years of study. Of these, at least 60 ECTS must be acquired through practical educational activities aimed at developing specific professional skills (professional ECTS). The programme is organised into 12 semesters and no more than 36 integrated courses; these are assigned ECTS in specific scientific-disciplinary areas by the University's programme regulations, in accordance with the provisions of the ministerial table of essential educational activities. In accordance with current European Directives, the duration of the Master's Degree programme in Medicine and Surgery is 6 years, consisting of at least 5,500 hours of theoretical and practical teaching carried out at or under the supervision of the University. The single-cycle Master's Degree programme in Medicine and Surgery requires a total of 360 University Credits (ECTS), spread over six years of study. Of these, at least 60 ECTS must be acquired through practical educational activities aimed at developing specific professional skills (professional ECTS). The programme is organised into 12 semesters and no more than 36 integrated courses; these are assigned ECTS in specific scientific-disciplinary areas by the University's programme regulations, in accordance with the provisions of the ministerial table of essential educational activities. (Ministerial Decree no. 1649 of December 19, 2023).
As part of the professional credits to be earned throughout the entire study plan, 15 credits must be allocated to the completion of the three-month practical-evaluation internship within the degree programme referred to in Article 3 of the Decree of the Minister of Education, University and Research No. 58 of May 9, 2018, and subsequent amendments and additions, aimed at obtaining a professional qualification. (https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/2018/06/01/18G00082/sg).
The aforementioned internship takes place during the fifth and sixth years of the programme for a number of hours corresponding to at least 5 ECTS for each month and is divided into the following periods, which may be non-consecutive:
one month in the Surgery Area;
one month in the Medical Area;
one month to be completed, no earlier than the sixth year, in the field of General Medicine.
The months of attendance cannot overlap.
Each single ECTS reserved for practical-evaluation internship must correspond to at least 25 hours of professional training. Pursuant to Article 102, paragraph 1, of Decree-Law No. 18/2020 (https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/2020/03/17/20G00034/sg), the final exam of the single-cycle Degree Programme in Medicine and Surgery is valid as a state examination qualifying the holder to practise as a medical doctor, subject to passing the practical-evaluation internship.
Each ECTS of foundation, core, related and supplementary educational activities chosen by the student must correspond to a student commitment of 25 hours, of which normally up to 12.5 hours of teaching activities in person or under the supervision of a teacher (lectures, small groups, assisted self-assessment, discussion of clinical cases and other types of teaching, in person and within the teaching facility). Their structure will be defined in the educational regulations and indicated in the teaching sheets.
Given that the following activities are highly experimental and practical in nature, each single ECTS of professional teaching activity must correspond to 25 hours of professional teaching activity with teacher guidance in small groups, within the teaching facility and/or the local area; each single ECTS for the preparation of the final dissertation must correspond to 25 hours of activity within the teaching facility.
Pursuant to paragraph 6 of Article 3 of Ministerial Decree 1649 of December 19, 2023, the programme ensures students full access to the educational activities referred to in Article 10, paragraph 5, of Ministerial Decree No. 270 of October 22, 2004, dedicating a total of at least 30 credits to the activities provided for therein, of which no less than 8 to the activities referred to in letter a) and no less than 12 to the activities referred to in letter b).
Furthermore, without prejudice to the reservation of no less than 8 credits for activities chosen independently by students, the master's degree programme reserves up to 8 credits to be chosen by the student from among the compulsory internship credits provided for by the Class for professional training activities. Their activation represents an important moment in the students' training, enabling them to achieve greater self-awareness of their professional future and facilitating a reasoned and confident choice of their post-graduate path.
Students are required to complete teaching evaluation questionnaires when booking certifying exams on the University's INFOSTUD platform or in the classroom during lessons, and are invited to complete an annual online questionnaire to evaluate their internship activities.
The Internship Record book is attached to these regulations (ANNEXE 1).
Description of the main teaching methods used in the degree programme
The teaching method adopted involves horizontal integration (between different disciplines in the same semester or year) and vertical integration (for similar or complementary topics over several years of the course) of knowledge, a teaching method based on a solid cultural and methodological foundation achieved in the study of pre-clinical disciplines and subsequently focused mainly on problem-solving and decision-making skills, early contact with patients, the acquisition of a strong professional identity and skills that include, in the context of the most frequently encountered clinical problems and major emergencies, both excellent clinical skills and excellent interpersonal skills with patients, enabling students to become capable of “caring” for them.
A highly integrated teaching programme was therefore planned, with the aim of promoting students' ability to acquire knowledge in an integrated rather than fragmented way, and to retain it not only in the short term but also in the longer term. Students will be able to acquire all the foundation professional knowledge and skills in the fields of internal medicine and specialist medicine, general surgery and specialist surgery, as well as community medicine, with the ability to detect and critically evaluate, from a clinical point of view and within a unified vision that also extends to the socio-cultural dimension, data relating to the state of health and illness of the individual.
With regard to practice-based learning, looking ahead to the future, the following are envisaged: 1) an increasingly greater integration with the clinical context, from the first to the sixth year of the programme; 2) a well-defined and growing sense of responsibility among students within the care process, throughout their training; 3) an increasingly greater consideration of student collaboration within the National Health System; 4) consideration of students as “medical students in training”, also taking into account their possibility of enrolling in ENPAM (National Pension Fund for Public Employees) while they are still students; 5) an increasingly evident and important link between “medical education” and “healthcare delivery”.
The general organisation of the programme therefore, includes vertical pathways that intersect and complement each other, providing for:
A first vertical pathway (first to sixth year of the programme) of a “biomedical” nature, organised according to an “inverse triangle” model in terms of the organisation of basic, preclinical and clinical educational activities, with clinical activities beginning in the early years of the programme (early clinical contact); for the degree programme taught in English, the start of clinical activities is subject to the requirement to attend the Italian language course organised by the University Language Centre during the first year.
A second vertical pathway (first to sixth year of the programme) of a “psychosocial” nature, dedicated to medical-scientific methodologies and the human sciences, with particular reference to topics such as bioethics, forensic medicine, epidemiology, general hygiene and occupational medicine (global health, One Health, e-Health), medical-scientific methodology, the doctor-patient relationship and inter-, intra- and trans-professional relationships in the complex process of care, topics related to health issues linked to gender, ageing, chronicity and multimorbidity, social and economic status and the relationship with the environment, diversity and disability, frail individuals, the clinical approach of narrative medicine, topics related to various areas of psychology, the sociology of health, and issues of economics and healthcare management; other topics which, taken together and in conjunction with the “biomedical” pathway, contribute to the development of students' professional identity;
A third vertical pathway (first to sixth year of the HT Medicine programme) of a “technological” nature, dedicated to the study of topics related to precision medicine, translational medicine, genomics, bioengineering, bioinformatics, bioelectronics, “network medicine”, “Big Data” analysis, medical robotics, “machine learning”, and artificial intelligence in its various uses related to scientific research and medical practice. Some of the above-mentioned content has been included in the educational objectives of all Single-Cycle degree programmes in Medicine and Surgery.
These major vertical pathways are closely linked, with different ECTS weights related to the declared training profile, in a study plan similar to the well-known “spiral curriculum” model, where critical reviews of the same topics are also provided for, with successive degrees of complexity and difficulty leading to the training of an “expert doctor” within the limits specified above, who has the right skills according to well-known international models:
1) excellent knowledge of medicine and clinical practice (what the doctor is capable of doing – doing the right thing);
2) excellent ability to perform clinical practice (when the doctor, in his clinical practice, does what is right – doing the thing right);
3) awareness of having achieved an excellent level of professionalism (when the doctor knows how to be professional – the right person doing it).
The specific content of the courses and learning outcomes is derived from the tasks that society entrusts to the medical profession, responding to a need for health and coinciding with the essential knowledge and skills necessary for professional practice, identified by a shared “core curriculum”. Professional credits and practical training activities must ensure the acquisition of a series of essential skills and abilities related to the “know-how” and “know-how-to-be” of a doctor, also identified by the “core curriculum”.
The teaching programme for the Master's Degree Programme in Medicine and Surgery therefore, offers the right balance of vertical and horizontal integration between:
a) Basic sciences, which must be broad and include knowledge of evolutionary biology, molecular biology, genetics, and biological complexity aimed at understanding the structure and function of the human organism under normal conditions, for the purposes of maintaining health and the correct application of translational scientific research;
b) Knowledge of disease processes and understanding of the mechanisms that cause them, also for the purpose of establishing prevention, diagnosis and therapy;
c) Clinical medical practice and its methodological foundations, which must be particularly solid, through extensive use of tutorial-type teaching, capable of transforming theoretical knowledge into personal experience in such a way as to build one's own scale of values and interests, and to acquire the professional skills useful for managing the complexity of medicine, building one's own professional identity;
d) The Human Sciences, which must constitute a useful foundation for achieving awareness of being a doctor and of the profound values of medical professionalism, in relation to those of the patient and society;
e) The acquisition of scientific, technological, medical, clinical and professional methodology aimed at the health problems of individuals and the community, with due attention to differences in population and sex/gender.
The distinctive features of the educational programme linked to the proper management of the degree programme, in a future-oriented vision, include: 1) adapting the curriculum so that it is increasingly geared towards the needs of the real world (authentic curriculum) and does not merely represent excellence isolated from the social context; 2) the presence of a curriculum that is increasingly flexible to the needs of students and allows for “adaptive learning”, instead of a standardised curriculum; 4) the creation of strong motivational bases that make interpersonal collaboration between students (peer-to-peer, team-based learning) increasingly common, instead of isolation and individualism; 4) the consideration of the student as a true partner in the educational process, rather than a customer of the process being offered; 5) greater emphasis on the quality of teaching and on teachers who obtain excellent ratings in student evaluations of teaching, as opposed to the current focus on the overall quality of individual integrated courses alone.