Abstract:

The Medicine degree at Universitat Jaume I is based on a curriculum design that follows a modern approach by enhancing the systemic point of view in almost all courses: each basic non-clinical course is designed to study the human body as a subsystem set. However, four academic years after its introduction (by the academic year 2011-2012), and at the gates of the fifth one, some strategies and teaching approaches have been revised to fine-tune the degree.
One of the strategies under revision is the scientific method roadmap. Initially, the scientific method was introduced in Basic (according to Bologna’s terminology) subjects of the first six semesters: Biostatistics (semester one), Informatics (semester third), and Epidemiology (semesters fifth and sixth). But, after some years of experience we observed that this action did not completely cover the strategic objective of introducing the scientific method in the Medicine degree.

A specific committee was created to design an integrated roadmap for introducing the scientific method into the three first academic years of the Medicine degree. The challenge had some restrictions, most of them coming from the national education legal framework, such as that the names of affected basic subjects had to be kept in order to guarantee nation-wide equivalences with the rest of medicine degrees or that the amount of teaching hours could not be expanded because it could exceed the student’s load per semester. On the contrary, some subjects could be moved from one semester to another, and some topics could be exchanged between subjects.

Finally, taking into account all the restrictions and degrees of freedom, the committee decided to focus on the above-mentioned subjects: Biostatistics, Informatics, and Epidemiology. A ‘deconstruction’ plan of those subjects was designed and executed between November 2013 and July 2015. In the last meeting of the Academic Board of the Medicine Degree, on July 29, 2015, the recommendations of the committee have finally been approved, in addition to other curricular revisions, for initiating their implementation in the following academic year 2015-2016.

The aim of this work is to describe the deconstruction process and details of how the scientific method roadmap has been designed. Other consequences are the re-distribution of teaching responsibilities and new collaborations with teachers coming from the former subjects. In summary, despite the compartmentalisation from the administrative point of view, academically we have created a pool of teachers involved in the three subjects as a whole matter. The next academic year will show us if our plan is right or not.

Keywords:

Scientific Method Roadmap, Medicine Degree Curriculum, Subject Deconstruction Process.