Undergraduate education in anaesthesia, intensive care, pain, and perioperative medicine: The development of a national curriculum framework

Abstract

The framework aims to provide support and guidance for medical schools in the development of competent, well-rounded doctors who are able to provide safe, patient-centered care in all areas of medical practice.

Anaesthesia and the undergraduate medical curriculum

“…Cooper and Hutton 1 identified the following possibilities: (1) resuscitation, (2) practical procedures, (3) consent and ethics, (4) rapid history taking and preoperative assessment, (5) pre-admission assessment, (6) acute and chronic pain control, (7) recovery ward experience, (8) fluid balance and clinical pharmacology, and (9) intensive care and the consequences of technological medicine. In the course of preparing a new curriculum framework to guide undergraduate education in anaesthesia, 9 we derived eight domains of anaesthetic and critical care practice, setting out what we believed to be the key capabilities of doctors practising in anaesthesia and related specialties ( Table 1). Some of these overlap with the list published 20 yr ago; others reflect the wider scope of our current work.…”

“…We followed an inclusive process of curriculum design, aiming to promote high-level learning amongst students, fully described elsewhere. 9 We conducted telephone interviews with anaesthetic educators at 33 UK medical schools identified from a list held by the Royal College of Anaesthetists. The question prompts were piloted and refined before being used in the interviews proper by one of two members of the project team.…”

“…The survey data were summarised using the usual standard descriptive methods and standard qualitative analytical techniques, by the same individuals, with methodological and thematic contributions from the other members of the team as required. 9 We later held a consultative national workshop to feed these findings back, identify barriers to anaesthetists' involvement with undergraduate education, and set broad aims for the final framework. We also created a brief suggested syllabus for content.…”

“…We are aware that there are some obstacles to this; our workshop participants mentioned lack of time, poor linkage between funding and educational activity, and the risk of 'saturation' of good teachers as difficulties. 9 They also perceived problems with 'ownership' of course content (possible overlap with surgery, acute medicine, and emergency medicine), lack of involvement with assessment of students, and possible issues with patient consent. Some of the examples in the above mentioned compendium 27 illustrate how anaesthesia departments have dealt with some of these challenges.…”

Qualitative research and pain: Current controversies and future directions

“…The findings from this study are transferrable to the growing literature on the development of pain education frameworks in various disciplines such as medicine, nursing, and dentistry. [30][31][32] Similarly, Mustafa et al 29 explored the lived experience of chronic pain in immigrant Indian-Canadian women using a phenomenological design. The authors found that immigrant Indian-Canadian women's experiences of pain are influenced by several unique sociocultural factors (e.g., gender roles, work burden, lack of social support), which in turn impact pain expression, openness to treatment, and the consequences of pain on the family.…”