[Teaching of infectious diseases in medical degree studies]

Abstract

The teaching of the infectious diseases in the Bachelor of Medicine degree consists of activities aimed at providing the student with levels of competence in this area (knowledge, abilities, attitudes) appropriate for a general physician, and to give them a solid base to achieve the skills and abilities for becoming a specialist in this area. Currently, the location, the amount and quality of infectious diseases studies in the Bachelor of Medicine degree are very disparate between the different Spanish Medical Schools. The incorporation into the European Higher Education Area, with the necessary adaptation of curricula, will enable the contents and the teaching objectives in this field to be better defined. The latest document from the Medical Schools Deans Conference clearly identifies the studies of the infectious diseases into the Medical Diseases module and in the area of human clinical training. In our opinion, infectious diseases must be considered as a major subject, preferably in the second semester of the fifth year, and having a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 9 ECTS, theoretical and practical, distributed equally among attendance, part-attendance and self-teaching credits. Infectious diseases pathology must be horizontally integrated with most of the other subjects in the clinical module and vertically integrated with the subject of microbiology. The coordination and most of the teaching of the credits in the infectious diseases subject must be done by specialists with clinical activity in infectious diseases.