gms | German Medical Science

This year the Association for Medical Education (Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung, GMA) will celebrate its 35^th anniversary and has reached a zenith. There can be no doubt about its adulthood – despite occasional foolish acts committed in the past.

GMA is glad to be involved in a number of key developments: Due to its expertise and significant involvement in the development of the national competency-based catalogues of learning objectives in medicine (NKLM) and dentistry (NKLZ), the Science Council committee on model medical courses (AG Modellstudiengänge Medizin des Wissenschaftsrates) [http://www.wissenschaftsrat.de/arbeitsbereiche-arbeitsprogramm/medizin.html] requested GMA’s opinion about the future design of medical courses in Germany. Medical courses should be competency oriented instead of working their way through an ever increasing number of specific subject areas and cross-disciplinary subjects. This would necessitate federal medical licensing regulations to allow for more freedom of medical schools to achieve and review graduate competencies. In this context it would be desirable, among other things, to establish a nation-wide structured practical clinical exam (M2), similar to the state OSCE implemented in Switzerland in 2011. These measures could contribute to improving the connectivity of medical courses and continuing professional development.

A symposium held in Bochum in February dealt with the evidence-based development of medical courses. It has become clear that the evaluation of the success of reform curricula and model courses requires considerable joint effort of stakeholders involved in order to agree on suitable qualitative and quantitative evaluation criteria. An important part of the solution will be the use of effective learning methods according to their effect sizes found in meta-analyses, as John Hattie demanded in the wake of the German release of his book "Visible Learning" [1]. But as single measures these cannot be expected to solve the entire problem. In addition to the essential use of evidence available from empirical educational research, consensus-building processes will always play a role, determining quality criteria for good teaching with respect to individual conditions of medical schools. The GMA committee "advancement of medical courses and study regulations" (Weiterentwicklung des Medizinstudiums und der Ausbildungsordnungen) will continue to deal with this issue.

This issue of ZMA includes the GMA position paper on the future of continuing medical education, created through dialogue between the GMA committee on continuing medical education and GMA Board of directors. Further papers on this subject are in progress. It is to be welcomed that the NKLM and NKLZ’s competence orientation, developed together with the Medical Faculty Association (Medizinischer Fakultätentag, MFT), has been included in the alignment of the new model regulations for specialist training by the German Medical Council (Bundesärztekammer, BÄK) [2]; following a BÄK survey which revealed a lack of an evidence base in specialty training, criticized by resident doctors [3]. Since Jan. 1^st 2013, the medical specialist bodies and the Medical Council are drafting regulations for specialist training through a web portal. A number of key questions remain unanswered - such as how health policy makers will in future fund the expensive specialist training, and the design of an appropriate framework for competency assessment in specialists after some five years or so of training. In this process, GMA as cross-disciplinary body without clinical specialist training interests of its own, just as its clinical sister bodies with their own specialist curricula, all organized in the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Wissenschaftlichen Medizinischen Fachgesellschaften, AWMF), act as discussion partner for the Medical Council and state medical boards. In conjunction with the AWMF the harmonization process among all medical specialist bodies regarding the NKLM and NKLZ is now taking place.

GMA considers itself an open and competent partner in dialogue and cooperation for the Medical Faculty Association, the Science Council, the German Medical Council, state medical boards and the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany towards even better medical courses and continuing professional development. GMA's adulthood seems to provide plenty of appealing challenges for the future.

The author declare that he has no competing interests.