Anatomy 3.0:Rediscovering Theatrum Anatomicum in the wake of Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged medical educators internationally to confront the challenges of adapting their present educational activities to a rapidly evolving digital world. In this article, the authors use anatomy education as proxy to reflect on and remap the past, present, and future of medical education in the face of these disruptions. Inspired by the historical Theatrum Anatomicum (Anatomy 1.0), the authors argue replacing current anatomy dissection laboratory (Anatomy 2.0) with a prototype anatomy studio (Anatomy 3.0). In this studio, anatomists are web-performers who not only collaborate with other foundational science educators to devise meaningful and interactive content but who also partner with actors, directors, web-designers, computer engineers, information technologists, and visual artists to master online interactions and processes in order to optimize students' engagement and learning. This anatomy studio also offers students opportunities to create their own online content and thus reposition themselves digitally, a step into developing a new competency of stage presence within medical education. So restructured, Anatomy 3.0 will prepare students with the skills to navigate an emergent era of tele and digital medicine as well as help to foreshadow forthcoming changes in medical education

Erasmus Mundus Master of Bioethics: a case for an effective model for international bioethics education

Designing bioethics curriculum for international postgraduate students is a challenging task. There are at least two main questions, which have to be resolved in advance: (1) what is a purpose of a particular teaching program and (2) how to respectfully arrange a classroom for students coming from different cultural and professional backgrounds. In our paper we analyze the case of the Erasmus Mundus Master of Bioethics program and provide recommendations for international bioethics education. In our opinion teaching bioethics to postgraduate international students goes beyond curriculum. It means that such a program requires not only well-defined goals, including equipping students with necessary skills and knowledge, but also it should first and foremost facilitate positive group dynamics among students and enables them to engage in dialogue to learn from one another

The increasing complexities of professionalism

Organized medicine\u27s modern-day professionalism movement has reached the quarter-century mark. In this article, the authors travel to an earlier time to examine the concept of profession within the work of Abraham Flexner. Although Flexner used the concept sparingly, it is clear that much of his writing on reforming medical education is grounded in his views on physicians as professionals and medicine as a profession. In the first half, the authors explore Flexner\u27s views of profession, which were (1) empirically (as opposed to philosophically) grounded, (2) case based and comparatively framed, (3) sociological in orientation, and (4) systems based, with professionalism conceptualized as dynamic, evolving, and multidimensional. In the second half, the authors build on Flexner\u27s systems perspective to introduce a complexity science understanding of professionalism. They define professionalism as a complex system, introduce a seven-part typology of professionalism, and explore how the organization of physician work and various flash points within medicine today reveal not one but several competing forms of professionalism at work. The authors then develop a tripartite model of professionalism with analysis at the micro, meso, and macro levels. They conclude with observations on how best to frame professionalism as a force for change in 21st-century medical education. Flexner\u27s reforms were grounded in his vision of two particular types of professional—the physician clinician and the full-time academic physician–scientist. The authors propose reform grounded in professionalism as a complex system composed of competing types

Two cultures: Two ships: The rise of a professionalism movement within modern medicine and medical sociology’s disappearance from the professionalism debate

In 1959, the novelist and physicist C. P. Snow, delivered his famous lecture on ‘Two Cultures’ at the University of Cambridge. Snow argued that while the humanities and the sciences (in particular, the natural sciences) form the two great cultural traditions humans use to make sense of their lives, these domains of knowing remain strangers to one another. Like ships passing in the night, science and art reflect a cultural divide for which no easy rapprochement exists