Harvard professors train medical faculty at Dr NTR University of Health Sciences

Vijayawada: Medical education with the help of technology will give best results, says team of medical professors from Harvard University who participated in first ever training programme organised for team of local professors at Dr NTR University of Health Sciences. University Vice- Chancellor Dr T. Ravi Raju, addressing the media, said that the university is organising a training programme with the support of Harvard University, which was the first of its kind in the country. A team of 100 professors out of 1,700 teaching in government medical colleges across the state participated in this 8 months training programme, he said. Initi-ally, a four-day interactive session was held and classes will continue in webinar mode.

The Harvard team will visit the university again in September. Team of professors who perform extremely well at this training programme will be flown to Harvard University, said Vice-Chancellor Ravi Raju. Vanesa Bijol, MD, programme director and assistant professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Kenneth B. Christopher, MD, programme director and assistant professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, Renal Division, Subha Ramani, MBBS, MPH assistant professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School and others participated in the training programme. Lack of proper infrastructure and crow-ded classrooms and old curriculum of the system is the main reason for the poor results in the system, said local faculty who attended the training programme. “This training helped us to understand global trends in medical teaching,” they said.

Harvard professors explained about their best practices in medical teaching. Dividing students into groups and interacting with them was the major practice there which promotes a friendly atmosphere between students and professors, said Anatomy professor at Andhra Medical College, Visakhapatnam, Dr K. Lakshmi Kumari.