EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES
Ross University School of Medicine (RUSM) features a state-of-the-art campus, innovative teaching methods, and an experienced and knowledgeable faculty—a combination that provides a medical sciences curriculum modeled after the curricula used in the United States. RUSM’s instructional technology and learning systems enhance the medical school experience and aid students in understanding and mastering medical concepts. Upon completion of the RUSM Medical Sciences curriculum—years one and two of medical school—students leave Barbados ready for the challenges of clinical training—years three and four—at teaching hospitals in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The RUSM Medical Sciences curriculum exposes students to a wide variety of active learning experiences and new teaching methods—both hands-on and high tech—that complement traditional lecture and case-based learning. These experiences include clinical skills training, small-group learning, standardized patient cases, and other clinically relevant activities. This approach helps students gain diagnostic skills and begin to think like doctors early in their medical school experience. It also helps prepare students for their all-important medical licensing exams.
RUSM medical school facilities include:
- Anatomical sciences and medical imaging facility
- Campus-wide wireless Internet and audiovisual and multimedia capabilities
- Hands-on and high-tech medical school classrooms and laboratories
- Extensive medical library
- Multipurpose study rooms
- Pathology lab
- Physiology lab
- Simulation Center
- Standardized patient examination and interview skills training rooms
ANATOMY LAB
RUSM’s high-tech anatomy laboratory provides hands-on instruction of gross anatomy—a critical area of study for all medical students. The lab features digital anatomy tables and such important medical imaging technology as computed tomography (CT) scanning, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and X-rays. RUSM students use the technology to study and review anatomic and radiologic images and develop the skills to accurately diagnose both normal and abnormal pathology and recommend paths of treatment.
RUSM’s anatomy lab complements a comprehensive gross anatomy curriculum that includes traditional instruction through lectures and small-group cadaveric dissection. The lab’s digital anatomy tables further the dissection experience by presenting representations of life-size cadavers that demonstrate a wide range of problems and symptoms—a range that would require many thousands of physical cadavers to show.
The digital tables combine with other lab technology to allow complete understanding of external and internal organs and their systems.
The anatomy lab at RUSM is a combination of three interconnected individual labs—two dedicated to anatomy and one used for ultrasound imaging and applied anatomy hands-on training.
Specific features of the RUSM anatomy lab include:
- 3D experience and interaction
- Complete Anatomy 3D4Medical application with 70-inch interactive touch screens
- Educational portal connected to a vast library of public cases with supporting imaging
- Histology and radiology imaging
- VH Dissector software
MEDICAL SIMULATION LAB
Simulation is an essential part of the medical sciences curriculum at RUSM. The RUSM Simulation Institute, accredited by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSIH), gives students access to sophisticated computerized human patient simulators to practice basic and diagnostic treatment skills. Simulation Institute rooms replicate a typical hospital setting, and each space is equipped with current medical technologies and patient simulators that help prepare students for real-world medical situations. Students imitate complex patient scenarios to improve and enhance their clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills, and they learn communication skills physicians need to work quickly and effectively with other medical team members. Students also learn how to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety.
Through practice in a safe setting, RUSM students hone their skills, refine advanced medical techniques, and even learn how to deliver news—both good and bad—to patients. The faculty guiding students through the Simulation Institute have done it all before—all hold Doctor of Medicine (MD) degrees and have extensive experience in academic medicine or private practice.
As for the human patient simulators at the Simulation Institute, they are incredibly lifelike. They blink, breathe, and speak, they have a heartbeat and pulse, and they accurately mimic human responses to such procedures as Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), intravenous medication, and intubation. Your heart will race along with the heart of the simulated patient when you are faced with the challenge of making critical decisions about your patient in just a few minutes or seconds—just as will happen in real-world situations as a practicing physician.
PATIENT EXAM ROOMS
Students at RUSM receive additional simulated experience in patient examination rooms that replicate the outpatient setting. Fully equipped to mimic contemporary exam rooms, these simulations involve standardized patients and are designed to teach and evaluate each student’s examination and communication skills and ability to accurately record a patient’s medical history.
IN THE MEDICAL SCHOOL CLASSROOM
Experienced and knowledgeable faculty lead RUSM students in each classroom, where the learning is enhanced by high-resolution monitors connected to audiovisual and multimedia equipment. Students also make use of iPad®s—issued to each student during the first semester—in the classrooms. The iPads carry important learning materials for each class, and also serve as notebooks and allow access to multimedia study materials. RUSM classrooms also feature teleconferencing systems that allow for effective distance teaching and learning.