Medical schools struggle under burden of growing numbers of students
|
|
|
Growing numbers of medical students in Finland are causing overcrowding, overly large groups of students taking part in examinations of patients, and indeed a shortage of patients to go around at medical faculties of Finnish universities.
Finnish medical students say that the biggest problem is the excessively large numbers of students participating in examinations of patients.
"Sometimes we have to arrange teaching in groups of 15 students because there are not enough teachers", says Terhi Savolainen of the medical students' association at the University of Kuopio.
At the University of Helsinki, teachers feel that six students would be the right size for a teaching group getting hands-on experience with patients.
"Larger numbers of students do not prevent teaching, but they do cause problems. The teaching situation suffers when some of the members of the group do not get to see and examine everything", says Pekka Ylitalo, chairman of the Medical Students' Association.
The situation is not good for the patients, either.
"It is certainly not pleasant from the patient's point of view to be examined by more than ten medical students one after another", says Hannu Halila of the Finnish Medical Association.
Halila would like teaching groups to have no more than just a couple of students.
Now we would need more teaching positions for group teaching and clinical education, because it is not possible to learn to become a doctor in a lecture hall. There is no indication yet that the quality of graduating doctors would have deteriorated, but such a risk exists, if there are no changes to the size of groups in clinical teaching."
Because of a shortage of doctors nationwide, the number of students accepted into medical schools has nearly doubled in the last ten years.
Large teaching groups are a problem in all five Finnish universities with medical faculties, but the most difficult situation is in Kuopio.
"The greatest problem is that there is not a sufficient diversity of patients. In the third year of teaching, the goal is to examine 15 surgical patients and 15 internal medicine patients during a year. It doesn't sound like a lot, but with 132 students on a single course in a year, we have to hunt for patients", Terhi Savolainen says.
Sometimes it can take hours to find just one patient.
"Students find this very stressful. Many students have to spend their holidays and weekends in hospitals in order to examine enough patients by May", Savolainen notes.
Hannu Halila says that the problem with medical training is that in the early 1990s, when there were sharp cuts in the training of doctors, medical schools were deprived of teaching resources accordingly, which was inevitably reflected in the number of teachers. When the pendulum swung back, resources lagged behind.
"Now that the number of students has increased, medical faculties feel that financing from the Ministry of Education has not been increased proportionally", Halila says.
According to the Ministry of Education, no more basic funding is available, because a consensus on the matter prevails between the ministry and Finnish universities.
"All universities said at the time that expansion of medical training would succeed, because they have the readiness for action on the basis of their earlier, broader activity", charges Ari Saarinen of the Ministry of Education.
The intake of students has gone up sharply: in the mid-1990s the annual enrolment was around 360 new undergraduates, while the figure is now closer to 630. Patient examinations begin from the third year of study.
Helsingin Sanomat
|
| 5.10.2006 - TODAY |
 Medical schools struggle under burden of growing numbers of students
|
|
