My name is Dr. Jane Gair and I am a PhD in Medical Genetics from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. I teach at the Island Medical Program (IMP) at the Univeristy of Victoria, a distributed site of the University of British Columbia's medical school. UBC uses problem-based learning (PBL) in its undergraduate curriculum and I have been involved as a PBL tutor with the program for 12 years. I have also been involved in Faculty Development and train all of the PBL tutors at the IMP.
I became involved with PAHS in 2008 when I travelled to Nepal to participate in the Consultative Meeting and to help Dr. Carol-Ann Courneya, a colleague at UBC, train 40+ Nepali faculty, staff and clinicians to become PBL tutors. We also held a PBL Case-Writing workshop. It was such a great experience for me and I met so many wonderful people! The Consultative Meeting was also a great experience, as I was able to meet so many people from the International Advisory Board to PAHS, and to help with their curriculum development.
I returned to PAHS last year (2011) during the Principles of Human Biology II (PHB II) block to lecture in Medical Genetics and to also train some more PBL tutors. Dr. Joan Mitchell, a colleague from the IMP, joined me last year to train 20+ PBL tutors for PAHS! The best part about last year was meeting the first batch of medical students! They were so eager to learn, fun to work with and appreciative of our efforts to teach them. I found it difficult to leave them.
I was really looking forward to my return to Nepal and to PAHS this year. I have not been disappointed. I am teaching medical genetics to the second batch of PAHS students this year. It has been so much fun! And, of course, I got to see many of my former PHB II students who are now in 2nd year.
I also delivered a PBL Tutor Training workshop again and helped to train 24 new PBL tutors along with Dr. Shambhu Upadhyay.
PAHS students helping demonstrate PBL to the trainees
The PBL Tutor Training graduates!
Thank you so much to all of the staff and faculty here at PAHS for making this visit so great, once again. Thank you also to the PAHS Batch #1 and Batch # 2 students for helping with PBL Tutor Training, letting me sit in on your PBL sessions and for being attentive in my lectures!
See you all next year!
