THE PLATFORM FOR UPDATING THE BIOPHYSICAL CURRICULUM IN THE GENERAL MEDICINE STUDY PROGRAM

The use of European funds enable the rapid development and deployment of new instrumentation to medical facilities. Students, which achieved their first professional medical degree, should be technically able to know basic instruments, or at least elementary knowledge about them. [1] This requires a certain degree of physical and technological literacy of the graduates.

The aim of work is to identify the main starting points for optimizing of biophysical curriculum for medicine study.

There were analyzed:
1. Students´ physical literacy after completion of the biophysics in medicine study. There was used original didactic test for physical literacy determination of 288 students of medicine.
2. Requirements of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic on the minimal equipment of health facilities [2]. Quantitative analysis was done with respect to devices that are used in main medical disciplines.
3. Biophysical curricula used for medical education in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.
We find out:
1. The level of physical literacy of medical students was on the minimal level of knowledge required for the study of medicine ((61.36 ±19.73) % for tasks focused on simple medicine problems (78.90± 15.60) % for clear physical tasks).
2. Personnel of each key hospital department must control the handling from 12 to 24 medical devices and instruments. Their number depends on the type of ambulance.
3. In the General Medicine study program are the main topics of biophysics teaching identical in all examined faculties. We have found large differences in the number of direct teaching lessons. It was 54 lessons in one case.

Students have physical knowledge they cannot use to solve problem tasks.
The content of the current curriculum of medical physics and biophysics at the faculties of medicine only partially covers the knowledge of medical devices and devices that the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic recommends for minimal equipment of key departments in the general hospital. In teaching biophysics are underrepresented physical principles devices designed mainly for resuscitation and patient drug dosage (infusion and injection pumps...).

Due to the specificities of the medical study programs, it is necessary to optimize the physical curriculum to support the skills of graduates in main medical disciplines that will correspond to level 7 of the European Qualifications Framework [3, 4]
This work is supported by grant project and GP 026UK-4/2017.

References:
[1] Description of the study program 7.1.1. General Medicine. Accreditation Commission of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of the Slovak Republic. Bratislava. 2016
[2] Decree of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic No.09812 / 2008-OL. Minimal requirements for personnel security, material, and technical equipment of individual healthcare facilities.
[3] The European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning. Education and Culture, EU. 2014
[4] Macková, S., Kukurová, E., Kráľová, E. et al. The supporting function of medical physics in the scheme of diagnostics and therapeutics processes and safety and hygiene regulations. In Book Kľúčové etapy vedeckej a pedagogickej činnosti Ústavu lekárskej fyziky, biofyziky, informatiky a telemedicíny LFUK v Bratislave (Trnka, M., Kráľová, E. eds.), pp.65-70. Prague: European Association for Phototherapy, 2014