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Università degli Studi di Parma Università degli Studi di Parma
Single cycle degree course 6 years in
Medicine and surgery
Università degli Studi di Parma
Department of Medicine and Surgery

Learning objectives

The single-cycle Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery provides a total of 360 ECTS credits, spread over six years, of which at least 60 are to be acquired in training activities aimed at developing specific professional skills (professionalising ECTS credits). The course is organised in 12 semesters and no more than 36 integrated course unnits; these are assigned specific ECTS credits by the Council of the teaching structure in accordance with the table of indispensable educational activities. Each ECTS credit corresponds to a student-commitment of 25 hours, of which not more than 12 hours of classes in the basic, characterising and related subject areas, or of theoretical-practical teaching (seminar, laboratory, exercise), or 25 hours of supervised study within the teaching structure. Each professionalising ECTS credits (training and advising/guidance placements) corresponds to 25 hours of student commitment (with guidance from the professor/instructor) as does each ECTS credit for student-choice activities and the final examination.

The specific mission of the single-cycle degree course in Medicine and Surgery is biomedical-psychosocial, i.e. aimed at the real development of professional competence and the values of professionalism. It is founded on the importance of integrating the biomedical paradigm of treating illness with the psychosocial paradigm of caring for the human being in the meta-paradigm of the complexity of care.
This specific mission is therefore aimed at training a doctor, at an initial professional level, who possesses:
- a multi-disciplinary, inter-professional and integrated vision of the most common health problems and pathologies; - an education oriented towards the prevention of illness and the promotion of health within the community and the territory; - a profound knowledge of the new needs for care and health, centred not only on the illness, but, above all, on the sick human being, considered in his or her entirety of soma and psyche, in his or her gender and population specificity, inserted in a specific social context.
The teaching method adopted, which is useful for the achievement of the expected qualifying characteristics, provides for the horizontal and vertical integration of knowledge, a teaching method based on a solid cultural and methodological foundation, achieved in the study of pre-clinical disciplines and then mainly centred on the ability to solve problems and make decisions, on early contact with the patient, on the acquisition of good clinical and human relations skills.
In the teaching project of the Degree Course, the right balance of vertical and transversal integration is proposed between:
-- the basic sciences, which must be broad and include knowledge of evolutionary biology, molecular biology, genetics and biological complexity aimed at the knowledge of the structure and function of the human organism under normal conditions, for the purpose of maintaining health conditions and the correct application of translational scientific research; -- knowledge of morbid processes and the mechanisms that cause them, also with a view to setting up prevention, diagnosis and therapy, also from a gender perspective -- clinical and methodological medical practice, which must be particularly solid, through extensive use of tutorial-type didactics, capable of transforming theoretical knowledge into personal experience, so as to build one's own scale of values and interests, and to acquire the professional skills useful for knowing how to manage the complexity of medicine; -- the human sciences, which must constitute a useful baggage to achieve awareness of being a doctor and of the profound values of the doctor's professionalism; -- the acquisition of scientific, medical, clinical and professional methodology, aimed at the health problems of the individual and the community, with due attention to population and gender differences.

The expected learning outcomes are defined by integrating the European Descriptors (5 Dublin descriptors) with those proposed by the Institute for International Medical Education (IIME), Task Force for Assessment, and The TUNING Project (Medicine) Learning Outcomes/Competences for Undergraduate Medical Education in Europe.
Below are the learning objectives for the single-cycle degree courses in Medicine and Surgery and attributed to the various methodological skills provided for by Ministerial Decree 16/03/2007, Art. 3 paragraph 7 required for this degree. The objectives are also consistent with the 'Core Curriculum for the Degree in Medicine and Surgery' proposed by the Standing Conference of the Presidents of the Italian Degree Courses in Medicine and Surgery (http://presidenti-medicina.it/).

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Course-specific learning objectives

The mission of the single-cycle degree course in Medicine and Surgery is identified with the training of a doctor at the initial professional level with a biomedical-psychosocial culture, who possesses a multidisciplinary and integrated view of the most common problems of health and illness. The graduate's education should be oriented towards community, territory and fundamentally disease prevention as well as health promotion, and with a humanistic culture in its medical aspects. This specific mission responds more adequately to the new demands of care and health, in that it focuses not only on the disease, but above all on the sick person, considered in his or her entirety of soma and psyche and included in the social context.
Medical training thus oriented is also seen as the first segment of an education that must last over time, and it is in this perspective that the knowledge that the student must acquire at this stage has been calibrated, giving due importance to self-learning, to experience not only in the hospital environment but also in local health facilities, to epidemiology, for the development of clinical reasoning and the culture of prevention.
The qualifying characteristics of the doctor to be trained include:

1) Good human contact skills (communication skills);

2) Capacity for self-learning and self-assessment (continuing education);

3) Ability to independently analyse and solve problems related to medical practice together with good clinical practice based on scientific evidence (evidence-based medicine);

4) Aptitude for constant updating of knowledge and skills, and possession of the methodological and cultural foundations suitable for the autonomous acquisition and critical evaluation of new knowledge and skills (continuing professional development);

5) Good practice of interdisciplinary and interprofessional work (interprofessional education);

6) In-depth knowledge of the methodological foundations necessary for a correct approach to scientific research in the medical field, together with autonomous use of the information technologies indispensable in clinical practice.