Medicine and Surgery

The ultimate goal of the program is to train a European-level professional physician with a biomedical background, a multidisciplinary and integrated vision of the most common health and disease issues, and an education focused on community, local, gender, disease prevention, and health promotion.

The program's curriculum is based on the principle of pursuing maximum integration between the disciplines taught, maximizing opportunities for faculty to be present in the classroom simultaneously and engaging students interactively.

Integration and interaction are achieved through lectures, meetings, problem-solving, exercises, and internships. The program's first two-year courses are held at the University's main campus. Starting in the third year, classes are held in classrooms adjacent to the Cattinara Hospital, which is equipped with a telemedicine system that allows connections from outpatient clinics and departments to the classrooms. The system also allows connections with other university classrooms for joint teaching activities (lectures and patient exercises).

Some teaching activities (including discussions of clinical cases) are suitable for telemedicine.

The course requires 360 credits (CFU), of which at least 60 are dedicated to practical internships. The internships included in the curriculum are divided into clinical and qualifying. Clinical internships allow students to acquire the specific skills for each course through a simulation component and a face-to-face component, carried out in various departments of the Giuliano Isontina University Health Authority (ASUGI) and the Burlo Garofolo Institute of Clinical Research. This provides a broad overview of practical activities in the medical, service, and surgical fields.

Regarding clinical internships, in the first and second years, students complete an internship focused on nursing/psychosocial care and supporting the patient's primary needs, working in the medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics departments.

In the second year, the human anatomy course includes attendance at the autopsy room. In the first semester of the third year, students learn semiological maneuvers, both through videos, peer-to-peer physical examinations, and by examining patients with organ pathologies. A simulator that faithfully reproduces cardiac and lung auscultation is used to teach students how to perform heart and lung auscultation. Furthermore, basic

laboratory medicine is taught. From the third year onward, students complete 12-hour internships, shadowing the on-call physicians who work in various hospital departments throughout the year. Additionally, for at least two hours each day, from October to December and from March to May inclusive, students rotate through the departments in groups of four. In the sixth year, students also attend the clinics of general practitioners as part of their qualifying internship. The qualifying internship is conducted in person starting in the fifth year, according to the procedures established by Ministerial Decrees 58/2018 and 18/2020, in the medical, surgical, and general medicine areas. The professionalizing internship, a prerequisite for obtaining the qualifying academic degree, is an integral and qualifying part of the professional training.

In addition to the core curriculum courses, the degree program includes

Medical Humanities (introduced in the first year) to enable a proper methodological approach to ethically sensitive issues. The inclusion of Palliative Medicine in the fifth year of the program completes and updates the holistic vision of humanity and its health.

To promote internationalization, students are offered the opportunity to participate in study programs abroad (including the Erasmus program).

Preparation of the thesis is required starting in the fifth year; qualifying/professionalizing internships (fifth and sixth years) allow access to the qualifying degree. After obtaining a degree in Medicine and Surgery and registration with the Order of Physicians, Surgeons, and Dentists, students may practice as a surgeon (for example, by working on call) or, by passing a test, access specialization schools or specific training courses in general medicine required to practice as a general practitioner within the Regional Health Service, pursuant to Legislative Decree No. 368 of August 17, 1999 – Title IV, Chapter I and subsequent amendments, and courses in suitability for territorial health emergencies pursuant to Art. 96 of the current National Collective Agreement governing relationships with general practitioners.