Volume 199 - Issue 2
Global health training and postgraduate medical education in Australia: the case for greater integration
Author: Kieran Walsh
Med J Aust 2013; 199 (2): 101-102. || doi: 10.5694/mja13.10457
Published online: 22 July 2013
Published online: 22 July 2013
To the Editor: Mitchell and colleagues have done medical education a service by outlining all the potential benefits and harms associated with global health training.1 They are right to state that sustainability is key - however, all too often in the past, it has been sustainability that has been lacking. According to Yikona, writing in 2003: “Case by case analysis of medical schools in sub-Saharan ...
To the Editor: Mitchell and colleagues have done medical education a service by outlining all the potential benefits and harms associated with global health training.1 They are right to state that sustainability is key — however, all too often in the past, it has been sustainability that has been lacking. According to Yikona, writing in 2003: “Case by case analysis of medical schools in sub-Saharan Africa would show an excellent first 10 years followed by a general downward spiral”.2 How are we to stop global health training going into a similar downward spiral?
There is unlikely to be a single answer, and potential answers are more likely to be found by looking forward rather than backward. The current technological revolution may, for example, have a profound impact on how we view global health training. In the past, doctors have had to travel to new locations to deliver education but today that is no longer necessary. Medical education may be delivered by means of synchronous video-conferencing over the internet. Surgeons can demonstrate new procedures by this means; physicians can diagnose patients with physical signs using teleconsultation; lecturers can simply lecture. Medical schools can put all their educational resources online and make them freely available to any learner in any country — to access them at a time and place that suits them.3 Curricula can be exchanged, improved and localised as they are transferred from one country to the next. Medical education may thus be delivered by fully qualified experts, rather than by doctors in postgraduate training.
Competing interests
No relevant disclosures.
References
- Mitchell RD, Jamieson JC, Parker J, et al. Global health training and postgraduate medical education in Australia: the case for greater integration. Med J Aust 2013; 198: 316-319. 0_CHDIHAAH
- Yikona J. Sustaining medical education is difficult in poor countries [letter]. BMJ 2003; 326: 51. 0_i1142859
- Harden RM. Trends and the future of postgraduate medical education. Emerg Med J 2006; 23: 798-802. 0_pgfId-2803243