Moataz Khogali, Cormac Duffy, Debbie Kileen, Ronan A. Cahill
Background: Undergraduate clinical surgical learning needs balance between direct experience and theoretical tuition but formal lecture scheduling impacts upon ward, theatre and outpatient-based contributions. Complexity of rotational siting with need for standardised curriculum matched to assessment strategies needs transparency of material along with availability on-demand whenever best suited to the students own learning needs and timetabling alongside the broader need for vertical integration throughout the medicine programme.
Methods: Didactic lectures from clinical experts from every surgical specialty represented within the module were audio visually recorded and merged with presentation material to provide a multimedia core component for the surgery module for clinical students. Consent was sought from all contributing clinicians with brand identification and content editing performed of video material by both administrative and academic experts.
Results: Over 30 hours of expert clinical insight was generously generated from within every surgical discipline comprising key topics by clinical experts in our 12 core surgical specialities (Breast, Cardiac, Colorectal, Endocrine, General, Hepatobiliary, Orthopaedic, Plastics and Reconstructive, Thoracic, Upper Gastrointestinal, Urology, Vascular Surgery-ENT and Ophthalmology) being separate modules. Material was made available on dedicated e-hosting sites with potential for additional platform hosting (e.g., YouTube) and media constituency (e.g., podcasting).
Conclusions: Record archiving of expert content allowed on demand access as well as transparency of teaching coverage while freeing learners and educators from time-table and curriculum centred constraints and enabling innovations such as flipped classroom teaching along with more site-specific, clinic based synthesis sessions.
