The UWI Mona Campus' Annual Departmental Reports 2022_2023

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DEPARTMENT OF BASIC MEDICAL SCIENCES

A follow-up report of the Quality Assurance Review of the Section of Physical Therapy was presented to the Academic Board Meeting on November 18, 2022. The review was a stand-alone one and the recommendation by the QAR team was to acquire a greater autonomy for the Section of Physical Therapy. The Department was actively involved in the Caribbean Accreditation Author- ity for Education in Medicine and other Health Professions (CAAM-HP) review which took place in November 2022 under the leadership of Dean Thame. Several academic staff of BMS are participating in the teaching delivery in the MBBS programme, including the Stage I Coordinator of this programme (Dr. Sherline Brown). The recent accreditation of the programme for five years by CAAM-HP in July 2023 enhances the reputation of the MBBS degree and of the University as a whole. It is also essential to attract more students to this high-income generating programme. This is particularly important considering the increased competition in this field of education/training in the region. The Department is also involved in the CAAM-HP Review of the DDS programme. It must be noted that an accreditation was awarded to CARIGEN for a two-year period, (2023-2025) by the College of American Pathologists. This accreditation attests of the quality of the work and analyses done in the CARIGEN Laboratory, one of the few Laboratories which received this distinction in the Caribbean area. Teaching As previously noted, after the long online parenthesis due to the COVID-19 pan- demic, the teaching is now back to face-to-face. Besides classical methods of teaching delivery, the Department is using novel methods. The involvement of the Department in the digital transformation of the University in different areas is illustrated by different examples. A formative assessment of MBBS/DDS students is accomplished in Physiology and Anatomy using virtual clickers where students can use their own devices, in collaboration with MITS. The goal is to increase the interaction with the students and to enhance their participation. Apps (i.e., Socrative) are also used with the same purpose. The use of Bodyviz, a software allowing the 3-dimensional reconstruction of images (i.e., MRI), has been implemented in the teaching of Anatomy for Physical Therapy and BBMedSc students, not only for the delivery of the teaching, but also for assess- ing the students using the bank of questions included with the software. Several Academic staff members, particularly of the Section of Anatomy, underwent a training in Virtual Reality using the EON-XR platform in collaboration with the Open Campus, and obtained a certification demonstrating a proficient academic usage of the EON-XR platform. Cross-campus teaching in Anatomy/Histology/ Embryology has been existing between Mona and Cave Hill for several years. Sim-

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