The ‘Innovations Award’ for Education has been awarded to the University’s Medical School for demonstrating the CoM’s key principles of service, science and healing in its undergraduate ‘Whole Person Care’ (WPC) course. The awards are given to projects that are at the forefront of delivery patient-centred care, and aimed at maximising the wellbeing of the local community.
The WPC course, led by the University’s School of Social and Community Medicine, takes holism into the core medical curriculum in a traditional (pre-clinical/clinical) medical programme, ensuring all first-year medical students receive foundation training in whole person care. Learning occurs through interactive lectures, tutorial groups and through individual assignments where students go into depth on a topic of their choice, and through teaching on systems thinking, the therapeutic relationship, PNI, the arts in healthcare, creativity, and integrative medicine.
Dr Trevor Thompson, Course Leader in the University’s School of Social and Community Medicine, said: "We are absolutely delighted to receive this award which reflects our endeavours over the last ten years. Such national recognition will hopefully assist us in our mission to bring holistic ideas into more parts of the curriculum. Nearly every doctor recognises that medicine is both an art and a science and we are simply putting that observation into educational practice."
Dr Michael Dixon, College of Medicine Chairman, said: “It is wonderful to see the diversity and versatility of the projects. Each of them has made a difference to patients as well as the future of healthcare, and every one of them is a token of the College’s commitment towards service, science and healing. Our job now is to make the ethos mainstream.”
The College of Medicine ‘Innovation Award’, one of eight awards, will be presented tonight [12 May 2011] by HRH The Prince of Wales at a ceremony in St James's Palace, London.
The judging panel comprised Professor David Colin-Thomé (Chair), Professor David Peters, Professor George Lewith and Kaye McIntosh. For more information about the College of Medicine and its Innovations Network, visit the College of Medicine website.