Specialist training in Nuclear Medicine
Specialist training in Nuclear medicine can be taken by any one who has a Norwegian physician's licence ("autorisasjon som lege") at one of approx. 10 approved teaching institutions in Norway. Each fellow will be trained according to an individual plan provided by the institution. Under the revised rules from 2016, total time in training (part 1 - residency in general medicine + parts 2 & 3) is 6 1/2 years. While the universities are in charge of training medical students, specialist training is governed by the Norwegian Health Directorate ("Helsedirektoratet").
Main content
New teaching aids for Nuclear Medicine
Nuclear medicine at the Institute for Clinical Medicine (K1) develops new teaching aids for nuclear medicine and evaluates them with the Institute of pedagogy, both for training medical students and nuclear medicine specialists. This long-term systematic effort was recognized by the University of Bergen through the designation as "Excellent teaching practitioner" ("Merittert underviser") in 2022.
The course in clinical nuclear medicine (NM3) i Bergen i 2016 was one of the first hybrid course in Norwegian specialist training in which plenary lectures were supplanted by new electronic teaching aids [3].
When the new medical curriculum "Medicine 2015" was introduced at the University of Bergen we developed new electronic teaching materials in the University's new leaning management system, https://mitt.uib.no. This was rewarded by the Medical faculty's Teaching Quality Award 2017, the Best Teacher Award presented on the the graduation ceremony in December 2019, and status as Excellent Teaching Practitioner in 2021.
From knowledge reproduction to teaching practical skills
In 2007, we joined the 4th pilot evaluation of the new practical examination (objective structure clinical examination, OSCE) at the University of Bergen. We developed a new OSCE station based on a case of a patient with lung cancer. Students had to demonstrate the patient's FDG PET/CT examination and interpret the study using diagnostic nuclear medicine software. To help the students prepare for the examination, we develeped new e-learning material in the University's new leaning management system, https://mitt.uib.no. We then participated in the first OSCE at the end of the 3rd year. We introduced a similar e-learning task in the 10th term and evaluated results of our latest teaching approach with our teaching under the previous curriculum. We were able to show that our new approach provided higher level learning outcomes in less student time [2]. In April 2020, we launched a freeware PET/CT viewer (Fiji + orthanc-server) so that medical students can continue with their practical training even while there are locked out from the hospital under the pandemic [1] - see screencast on vimeo.
e-learning in specialist training
In October 2019 we started a new e-course NM5 - Nuclear Medicine in Oncology for specialist in nuclear medicine, Norway's first e-course in specialist training outside General Medicine, on our own learning management system, https://nukit.ihelse.net/moodle. Our web lecture "e-læring i nukleærmedisin" (Norwegian) and our latest original publication [4] provide an overview over our latest teaching approach.
Continuing medical education (CME)
On 4 April 2020 we launched a new e-course ePSMA on PSMA-PET for prostate cancer for nuclear medicine specialists. The course uses the same e-learning platform and e-learning modules as the courses for specialist training. Specialists who have taken ePSMA will thus learn how to produce similar e-course components for their own teaching in future nuclear medicine courses. Since 2022, we have opened up our CME courses to medical students at the University of Bergen in the form of elective electronic mini-courses (EEMED301 and EEMED302) - the only ones of its kind.
References
- Biermann, Martin; Kanoun, Salim; Davidsen, Trond; Gray, Robert Jr. 2020. An open source Solution for “hands-on” teaching of PET/CT to medical students under the COVID-19 pandemic. Nuklearmedizin (ePub) DOI 10.1055/s-00034924
- Gulati, Ankush; Schwarzlmüller, Thomas; du Plessis, Elsa; Softeland, Eirik; Gray Jr, Robert; Biermann, Martin. 2019. Evaluation of a new e-learning framework for teaching nuclear medicine and radiology to undergraduate medical students. Acta radiologica open. 8: 1-6. doi: 10.1177/2058460119860231
- Haslerud, Torjan Magne; Tulipan, Andreas Julius; Gray Jr, Robert; Biermann, Martin. 2017. E-learning for medical imaging specialists: introducing blended learning in a nuclear medicine specialist course. Acta radiologica open. 6: 1-5. Publisert 2017-07-25. doi: 10.1177/2058460117720858
- Tulipan, Andreas; Gulati, Ankush; Haslerud, Torjan; Gray, Robert Jr.; Biermann, Martin. 2024. Rebooting nuclear medicine specialist education under the COVID-19 pandemic: From plenary lectures to active e-learning. Clin Physiol Funct Imaging (ePub); doi: 10.1111/cpf.12875
