The Teaching Vocation at the San Raffaele Hospital

The San Raffaele Hospital is a major structure of clinical practice (over 1100 beds) and research, with a long tradition of medical teaching dating back to 1976. It previously housed one of the centres of the Medical School of the Milan State University as well as numerous Medical Training Programmes.

Closely linked to the hospital is the DIBIT, a highly prestigious centre of basic research and biotechnology which is home to many leading groups in the fields of genetics, molecular biology, neurosciences and so on. An agreement with the Open University in London allows the DIBIT to offer an international-level Ph.D. programme.

In 1996, the San Raffaele Hospital established its own university, named Vita-Salute, first with the Faculty of Psychology and subsequently, in 1998, with the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.

Innovative Features

The Faculty has been developed with the aim to take a whole new look at medical teaching in Italy.

It is based on two fundamental principles:

- a close connection between basic and clinical teaching

- a study plan aiming to generate general practitioners, who are of primary importance in a well organised health system

This project is made possible by:

- the innovative teaching strategy

- the teaching and professional structures available

- the high-tech standards of research, carried out in internationally prominent laboratories linked closely to the technological development of the San Raffaele Biomedical Science Park

- the medical practice at the San Raffaele Hospital

The level of MD graduates at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University is expected to be as high as that of graduates at the finest international universities. They are therefore expected to be fully competitive in the EU medical community and ready to successfully carry out the entrance tests required to practise in the USA.

The "new" MD student is competitive due to the following:

- the size of classes is small to make teaching easier. The selection of students is made according to objective criteria. The general atmosphere is therefore favourable to the transfer of knowledge

- the student has a key, active role in the teaching process

- the dichotomy between basic and clinical sciences, still present at most European Medical Schools, has been replaced by the early teaching of practical medical courses and by the integrated courses, held both by didactic experts and clinical professors

- elective courses, seminars and work period opportunities, given to help students choose between research, technological and clinical specialities

- the credit system, by which the importance of each course is evaluated

- the students give their own evaluation of each course

- the final dissertation, an essential evaluation tool of the student’s creativity and professional development. All dissertations will be based on experimental research in either basic or clinical disciplines

The Teachers

Professors have been, and are being, chosen according to criteria of excellence in teaching, research and clinical activities.

Teaching activities are monitored by an Observatory Office working with the support of external experts. The integrated courses and the professors of each semester are co-ordinated by a professor in charge of the coherence and complementation of the teaching. In addition, it is the duty of the co-ordinator to follow the development of the students’ “medical personality”.

The teaching activities at the Vita-Salute Faculty of Medicine and Surgery are:

- lectures

- interactive lectures

- practical activities

Research Laboratories

Numerous, highly reputed international laboratories are associated to the Vita-Salute University. In most cases, although independent of each other and specialised in either basic or clinical sciences, each of these laboratories maintains cultural connections with the others, thus assuring a wide circulation of ideas and technology. This policy offers students the opportunity to work (for example on their dissertations) at the interface between basic and clinical sciences. The major areas of this combined, basic-clinical research at the Vita-Salute University are genetics, molecular pathology, neurosciences, metabolic and renal diseases, cardiology, immunology and infectious diseases.

The European Credit Transfer System (ECTS)

Formation credits are the evaluation units of student commitment, necessary in order to acquire adequate knowledge and operative skills.

Credits may be acquired from multiple sources including formal teaching, tutorial activities, practical work and personal study. The latter includes bibliographical research as well as any other learning work students carry out personally.

Since these activities require time, credits are expressed in time units. Twenty-five hours (°) per credit have been indicated by the MIUR, the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research. Taking into account that 60 Credits are assigned each year for university courses, the commitment for the complete Medical School Course corresponds to 9000 hours.

The credit system is not perfect. The time dedicated by the student to self-study varies. Nevertheless, reference to an average evaluation is useful in order to adequately plan the teaching load. In integrated courses the credit time can be variably spent for either the formal, tutorial or practical activities, while in other courses more time is needed for personal study. Each teacher needs to establish beforehand how much time has to be dedicated to the various activities, in order to avoid any type of inadequate planning. In particular, the average time needed for personal study needs to be carefully thought out.

The matching between individual activities in the various courses and the corresponding credits is also of great importance.

To appropriately establish this correspondence, the notions and abilities the students are  expected to acquire need to be identified, and the credits (or fractions of these) precisely indicated. The establishment of this correspondence is absolutely necessary in order to make mobility among European universities possible, with students keeping their credits even when curricula are different. In this respect it is possible that the credits students have acquired in a certain discipline at the university of origin do not precisely match the commitment requested at the university where they have moved to. In this case, in order to avoid teaching repetitions, it will be important to identify in the credits requested by the receiving university the fraction corresponding to those activities already carried out at the university of origin. Since the evaluation of individual teachers can vary considerably, the procedure of discipline-credit matching may become a critical issue.

During 2000-2001 a forum was held at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University with expert ECTS counsellors . A credit code, common to those European universities adhering to the system, was therefore established.

(°)  in the Nursing School one credit corresponds to 30 hours of student work.