Dear students and employees,
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It is both poignant and pleasant to reflect on my four exciting and eventful years in the Dean’s Office at the Faculty of Medicine. The pandemic may have derailed some of our plans and ambitions, but nonetheless, we have achieved a great deal.
The pandemic and the first round of graduates with a new curriculum
Above all, I am proud that together we managed to get through the pandemic without the progress of any of our students’ studies being delayed. I would like to thank both the students and all the teaching and administrative staff who helped us to implement the teaching. I know that many of my colleagues were very weary of constantly having to alter their plans, and that the students longed to return to normal teaching and in-person interactions with their fellow students and teachers. At the same time, I’m impressed with how everyone followed through on the changes we were forced to make.
In the first spring of the pandemic, we graduated the first year group of students who had followed the Oslo 2014 curriculum. By the skin of our teeth, we managed to introduce the final step in the curriculum – in-depth supervised professional training in the final year of study. That training proved to work well. New curriculum notwithstanding – our students stepped out into a world that looked a lot like the one students encountered 100 years earlier. Fortunately, they have a great many more tools to use in the fight against epidemics than their predecessors.
New study places and the first decentralised campus
These past few years, much of our work has been related to the Grimstad Report, which deals with increasing the number of places in medical studies programmes in Norway. First we provided our insights to the report, and later we followed up with input to the Ministry of Education and Research on how many new places we can create and what this will demand of us. We got 20 new places in 2020, but have not received clarification on whether this number will be expanded further.
A major increase in places will necessitate changes in the study programme. As part of this process, we have started to establish our first decentralised campus, UiO Campus South, together with S?rlandet Hospital and the surrounding municipalities. I am impressed by the work that has gone into this undertaking, both among our employees in Oslo and our partners in Southern Norway. In the autumn of 2023, the first students will start at UiO Campus South, and I am confident that they will have a great and exciting time studying there.
We have also been wanting to establish a decentralised medical studies programme in Innlandet and have now signed a letter of intent with Innlandet Hospital Trust to establish UiO Campus Innlandet, which is set to open in 2025. Our experiences from Southern Norway will be important in this work.
MED becomes the host faculty for SamPraks
Collaboration across studies and faculties is also important. I am very pleased that we have now established SamPraks (“Sammen i praksis”) as a separate and inter-faculty supervised professional training project at UiO. The Faculty of Medicine has played a central role in the pilot project, and we will now serve as the host faculty spearheading six other faculties. The goal is for all professional students at UiO to gain experience through inter-professional, collaborative learning during the course of their studies.
New national guidelines
RETHOS, the new national guidelines for medical studies, is another important process with which we have worked a great deal. We have implemented the learning outcomes and are now working to introduce more supervised professional training in the medical studies programme. I have been a member of the national RETHOS group that has drawn up the guidelines for medical studies. It has been important and exciting to contribute to this work.
Regular meetings with the students
My role has been to focus on medical studies, while Eivind Engebretsen has served as the Vice-Dean for Postgraduate Studies. During the pandemic, we established new procedures for our contact with students, with informal meetings every second week at which we have discussed various issues that we or the students wished to address. Student participation has been an important topic of discussion, and we have devoted some of the time in the meetings to preparing an action plan for student participation at the faculty.
Handing over good ideas to a new Dean’s Office
Some of our work remains unfinished. We have carried out an evaluation and preparatory work to improve the quality of the medical studies at UiO. Our proposal includes more student-activating teaching, more formative evaluation, a focus on team work and tightening up the programme to avoid unnecessary repetitions in the teaching.
We have also begun efforts to evaluate the use of grades in the medical studies programme. I hope the new Dean’s Office can implement the good ideas that have been contributed in their work. The pandemic also put a damper on our plans to increase opportunities for supervised professional training abroad, but we hope this will become possible as the situation normalises over time.
A useful community of deans of studies
Being Pro-Dean has made me part of a community comprised of the other deans of studies at UiO. I’ve learned a lot from that. The medical studies programme differs somewhat from the other studies at the university, but many issues are common and useful to discuss. Our collaboration with the other medical faculties in Norway has also been very educational. Previously, those of us responsible for the medical studies programme met once a semester, but during the pandemic we started meeting via Zoom every month. RETHOS, follow-up of the Grimstad Report, and solutions during the pandemic have all been important topics in our meetings. We have also now established the common national exam as the final exam at all four medical faculties.
Thank you for your collaboration
Finally, I would like to say that I have greatly appreciated having many fine and talented people around me all these years – both those of you who have organised and carried out the teaching at the departments and those responsible for the faculty administration. I have gained many useful experiences that I can now take with me and apply to my new role as Head of Department for the Institute of Health and Society.
Thank you for your collaboration – and good luck with all your important work at the Faculty of Medicine!
Best wishes,
Elin Olaug
A look back at selected editorials written by the outgoing Pro-Dean over the past four years:
- Quality Improvement Oslo 2014 - a further process regarding the 2014 curriculum
- Education for a sustainable healthcare system
- Freedom of choice provides inspiration in studies