Interdisciplinary Teaching of Digital Competencies for Undergraduate Medical Students - Experiences of a Teaching Project by Medical Informatics and Medicine

Abstract

The increasing digitalization of medicine stressed the importance of teaching digital competencies in undergraduate medical education. However, in many medical curricula in Germany, medical informatics is underrepresented. Due the upcoming reorganization of medical undergraduate education in Germany, topics previously assigned to medical informatics represent curricular challenges for all medical disciplines. Against this background, experiences from the project DigiWissMed show how medical informatics can support the teaching of digital competencies in all disciplines of medical education. Therefore, interdisciplinary teaching teams of medical informatics professionals and physicians were formed. In different academic years, this teaching teams jointly designed and implemented new seminars to convey digital competencies. The seminars covers topics such as technology acceptance, telemedicine and assistive health care related to the medical specialty. So, in the project DigiWissMed, the practicability and usefulness of interdisciplinary teaching teams to convey digital competencies could be demonstrate. In the digitalization process of medicine, medical informatics plays a key role. For future-proof medical education, experts of this field should be involved in teaching digital competencies, too.

Keywords: Curriculum; Medical Education; Medical Informatics; Teaching.