Thursday 11 September 2014

PROBLEM BASED LEARNING IN MEDICAL TRAINING

Over the last three years, we have promoted Mastery Learning in schools of the world with focus on schools of Papua New Guinea. It is a problem based approach by which students master sequences of graded exercises.

Master Learning contrasts strongly with the common approach that students have to follow in copying passages from the black board into their work books to be tested on theory at the end of the term. The focus was on mastery of practical exercises.

But we have always referred to the mastery Learning Problem Based Learning (PBL) of doctors in the Papua New Guinea School of Medicine and Health Science (SMHS). Now we have a report in the newspaper from the esteemed Professor Sir Isi Kevau on Problem Based Learning.

Quality of doctors rising

Post Courier 12 September Letter to the Editor P.13

The traditional Curriculum used in the Faculty of Medicine UPNG ran for 39 years. I was trained under this curriculum. For the last 14 years, the Problem Based Learning curriculum has been used.

From our searching, we discovered that the McMasters University in Canada had developed an innovative curriculum based on student centred learning. Later we learned that closer to home the students of the University of Newcastle were taught under a Problem Based Learning curriculum.
Approval was granted to use the new curriculum. It started in January 2000 to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students studying the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.

I am very proud to be the teacher of PNG doctors who have graduated from both the traditional and PBL. They have all been very impressive.

Mastery Learning in the PNGDF

As an instructor at the Joint Services College in 1955-77, I am proud to have been involved with Mastery Learning in Decision Making skills.

It involved the mastery of skills of checking and double-checking in military scenarios. The programme consisted of 126 mastery problems that students had to solve. It was very similar to the approach of which Professor Kevau writes.

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