Graduates from a traditional medical curriculum evaluate the effectiveness of their medical curriculum through interviews

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In 1996 The University of Liverpool reformed its medical course from a traditional lecture-based course to an integrated PBL curriculum. A project has been underway since 2000 to evaluate this change. Part of this project has involved gathering retrospective views on the relevance of both types of undergraduate education according to graduates. This paper focuses on the views of traditional Liverpool graduates approximately 6 years after graduation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>From February 2006 to June 2006 interviews took place with 46 graduates from the last 2 cohorts to graduate from the traditional Liverpool curriculum.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The graduates were generally happy with their undergraduate education although they did feel there were some flaws in their curriculum. They felt they had picked up good history and examination skills and were content with their exposure to different specialties on clinical attachments. They were also pleased with their basic science teaching as preparation for postgraduate exams, however many complained about the overload and irrelevance of many lectures in the early years of their course, particular in biochemistry. There were many different views about how they integrated this science teaching into understanding disease processes and many didn't feel it was made relevant to them at the time they learned it. Retrospectively, they felt that they hadn't been clinically well prepared for the role of working as junior doctor, particularly the practical aspects of the job nor had enough exposure to research skills. Although there was little communication skills training in their course they didn't feel they would have benefited from this training as they managed to pick up had the required skills on clinical attachments.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These interviews offer a historical snapshot of the views of graduates from a traditional course before many courses were reformed. There was some conflict in the interviews about the doctors enjoying their undergraduate education but then saying that they didn't feel they received good preparation for working as a junior doctor. Although the graduates were happy with their undergraduate education these interviews do highlight some of the reasons why the traditional curriculum was reformed at Liverpool.</p

Graduates from a reformed undergraduate medical curriculum based on Tomorrow's Doctors evaluate the effectiveness of their curriculum 6 years after graduation through interviews

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In 1996 Liverpool reformed its medical curriculum from a traditional lecture based course to a curriculum based on the recommendations in Tomorrow's Doctors. A project has been underway since 2000 to evaluate this change. This paper focuses on the views of graduates from that reformed curriculum 6 years after they had graduated.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Between 2007 and 2009 45 interviews took place with doctors from the first two cohorts to graduate from the reformed curriculum.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The interviewees felt like they had been clinically well prepared to work as doctors and in particular had graduated with good clinical and communication skills and had a good knowledge of what the role of doctor entailed. They also felt they had good self directed learning and research skills. They did feel their basic science knowledge level was weaker than traditional graduates and perceived they had to work harder to pass postgraduate exams. Whilst many had enjoyed the curriculum and in particular the clinical skills resource centre and the clinical exposure of the final year including the "shadowing" and A & E attachment they would have liked more "structure" alongside the PBL when learning the basic sciences.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>According to the graduates themselves many of the aims of curriculum reform have been met by the reformed curriculum and they were well prepared clinically to work as doctors. However, further reforms may be needed to give confidence to science knowledge acquisition.</p

Dynamic coordinated control laws in multiple agent models

We present an active control scheme of a kinetic model of swarming. It has been shown previously that the global control scheme for the model, presented in \cite{JK04}, gives rise to spontaneous collective organization of agents into a unified coherent swarm, via a long-range attractive and short-range repulsive potential. We extend these results by presenting control laws whereby a single swarm is broken into independently functioning subswarm clusters. The transition between one coordinated swarm and multiple clustered subswarms is managed simply with a homotopy parameter. Additionally, we present as an alternate formulation, a local control law for the same model, which implements dynamic barrier avoidance behavior, and in which swarm coherence emerges spontaneously.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure

Individual rules for trail pattern formation in Argentine ants (Linepithema humile)

We studied the formation of trail patterns by Argentine ants exploring an empty arena. Using a novel imaging and analysis technique we estimated pheromone concentrations at all spatial positions in the experimental arena and at different times. Then we derived the response function of individual ants to pheromone concentrations by looking at correlations between concentrations and changes in speed or direction of the ants. Ants were found to turn in response to local pheromone concentrations, while their speed was largely unaffected by these concentrations. Ants did not integrate pheromone concentrations over time, with the concentration of pheromone in a 1 cm radius in front of the ant determining the turning angle. The response to pheromone was found to follow a Weber's Law, such that the difference between quantities of pheromone on the two sides of the ant divided by their sum determines the magnitude of the turning angle. This proportional response is in apparent contradiction with the well-established non-linear choice function used in the literature to model the results of binary bridge experiments in ant colonies (Deneubourg et al. 1990). However, agent based simulations implementing the Weber's Law response function led to the formation of trails and reproduced results reported in the literature. We show analytically that a sigmoidal response, analogous to that in the classical Deneubourg model for collective decision making, can be derived from the individual Weber-type response to pheromone concentrations that we have established in our experiments when directional noise around the preferred direction of movement of the ants is assumed.Comment: final version, 9 figures, submitted to Plos Computational Biology (accepted

An evaluation of the reform of the Liverpool medical curriculum

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