Using the Tuning (Medicine) Learning Outcomes
Tuning is not an attempt to achieve rigid curricular uniformity – indeed one advantage of an outcomes-based approach is that diversity in educational process and curriculum structure can be preserved. Individual schools can also select additional learning outcomes in order to develop or preserve a distinct educational profile – for example, a specific emphasis on research-related experience and skills - without compromising the essential competence of their graduates and their fitness to care for patients.
The structure of the outcomes framework has been chosen to be useful to those involved in planning and designing new undergraduate medical degree programmes. The Level 1 outcomes describe domains of teaching, learning and assessment that lend themselves to becoming “curriculum themes”, with defined academic leadership and dedicated resources. The Level 2 outcomes can help to define the content of such themes in terms of teaching, learning and assessment. The Professionalism outcomes are relevant when addressing the personal and professional development and fitness to practise of medical students. In future work we aim to document best practice in learning, teaching and assessing these outcomes. Meantime useful information on outcome-based assessment can be accessed through the Scottish Doctor website (http://www.scottishdoctor.org).
Previous outcomes statements such as the “Scottish Doctor” (Scottish Deans Medical Curriculum Group, 2002) have proved to be a useful framework and stimulus for collaborative working between institutions, for example on the use of shared assessment items. Similar collaborations will be possible using the Tuning (Medicine) outcomes.
It seems likely that schools which share a common set of graduating learning outcomes will find it much more straightforward to exchange students and staff, particularly in the later parts of the curriculum. Similarly, assurance that graduates have achieved the necessary learning outcomes is likely to facilitate mobility of doctors in Europe and provide reassurance to employers and patients.
Consideration of a medical school’s graduating outcomes in relation to an agreed framework should be an integral part of quality assurance and accreditation, sitting alongside evaluation of education process and infrastructure. Recently developed methodologies permit systematic mapping of one outcomes framework against another, so that a school’s learning outcomes could simply be cross-referenced against the European framework (Ellaway, R et al, 2007). Although it is likely that national systems of quality assurance and accreditation will continue to predominate in Europe, the Tuning outcomes can support a developing European dimension in medical education as part of a harmonisation process.