THE National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria (NPMCN) has concluded a training workshop for examiners, assessors and supervisors on how to provide comprehensive and sound assessment system for medical and dental students across the country.
With over 400 examiners, trainers and consultants in attendance, the train-the-trainer’s workshop, which held in Lagos, aimed at enhancing the capacity, skills and competency of medical personnel.
Addressing participants, the College President, Prof. Rasheed Arogundade, noted that since the college is saddled with the mandate of producing medical and dental specialists, who will provide world class services in teaching, research and healthcare, it has become imperative to boost its activities through proper planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of appropriate postgraduate training programmes.
According to him, the educational activities planned for resident doctors to deliver effective and efficient healthcare require not only knowledge and technical skills, but also analytical and communication skills, interdisciplinary care, counseling, evidence and system based care.
“Assessment has a powerful positive steering effect on learning and the curriculum. It conveys what we value as important to produce world class specialists of the highest quality, competency and dedication, and also acts as the most cogent motivator of resident learning,” he said.
With regular review of the training curricula of all faculties of the college in line with international best practices being proposed, he maintained that the standard of training, content and methods of delivery would be raised in conjunction with more specific and rigorous examination methods.
Arogundade informed that the two-day workshop also touched on issues relating to proposals and dissertations, presentation format, methods of submission, assessment and plagiarism among others.
Arogundade, who is a professor of Radiology and Fellow of the West African College of Surgeons (FWCS), lamented the paucity of funds to the college, stressing that underfunding has crippled some of its programmes and activities.
Soliciting for the support of TETFUND to enable the institution keep up with its mandate, he said, “funding has been a major challenge, especially now that government has financial challenges, there is no money voted for capital projects and the money coming to us now is for staff salary and overhead.
The money we get for projects is what we charge when residents apply for examinations and that is barely sufficient.” The don called on TETFUND for support, adding that the college is in charge of education at the highest level of medicine, as they train specialists who become teachers in medical schools and consultants in various teaching hospitals across the country.
“Our mandate is to produce specialists of the highest quality and apart from funds for capital projects, we also need funds to establish a medical skills lab, which is necessary for us to train our residents and also train the trainers. We have made proposals to TETFUND and we hope they listen to us very soon.
“Apart from money for staff salary and overhead, we don’t really get any money from the ministry of health. In fact, they consider us as regulatory body, we are more than that, we certify our trainees to become specialists; so, apart form money for salary and overhead, we don’t have any other money coming in, which is the reason we are calling on TETFUND. We would also be happy if private individuals also come to our rescue because health is a matter for everybody,” he said.
