Description

Recognizing the increasingly diverse career options for high school students and growing competition for entrance into medical and allied health science programs, the Division of Teaching Laboratories (DTL) in the faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto has developed a unique program which provides high school students with unparalleled access, experience and foretaste of medicine, research, allied health professional programs and university life. One of the main goals is to enrich and empower high school students with choices when learning and deciding on a host of available career options. The program uses a module based approach where each one-week long module introduces one of the four major medical disciplines (physiology, molecular biology and forensics, pharmacology and toxicology and microbiology). Each module provides exceptional access to the medical faculty and research facilities in order to allow participants to experience what it is like to be a student at Canada's premier university. It has a maximum capacity of 400 students and the past few years have seen students represented from 31 different countries. Participating students who come from around the world leave the program with a renewed sense of focus, enthusiasm, and self-determination, to successfully pursue their dreams and goals in health sciences. Patient-client interactions require that the practitioner understand the whole of the individual in need of care. The combination of scientific knowledge with curiosity and imagination is important to attain the most effective critical assessment of the presented complaint or concern.

Integrating arts and sciences

It has been argued, by demonstrating that curiosity and knowledge, patients can better identify with the practitioners who treat them: Patients will see themselves in their doctor's gaze. They will not only. As noted, the influence of humanities and liberal arts in the academic health science programs has been studied mostly actively within the framework of medical schools and nursing programs although it has not been a topic of significant published study, the liberal arts and humanities do factor into the academic curriculum for dietetics. Because the principles imparted by courses in these disciplines can be invaluable both academically and professionally as well as in the context of individual embracing the liberal arts and science concurrently is no outlier, because it is a “misconception that the social can be separated from the cultural.”In fact, educators at Harvard have raised the following question: “Why would one choose to enter the world of medicine, we ask, without having encountered the thinkers who have expressed and explored pain, healing, empathy or hubris, one of the most revered pioneers in the field of medical practice and education, was known Harrison's ballet training began at a very demanding Russian school that trained her for professional dancing, a career that began right out of high school and culminated with her being the principal dancer with Atlanta Ballet for a number of years. This training prepared her for a career in dietetics in a multidimensional way.

Much of scientific examination begins in the same way as analysis in the arts: Start with a theory, then find the evidence to back it up. Both the sciences and liberal arts and humanities allow for the possibility of multiple truths. The discernment process among multiple scientific hypotheses, wherein “the search becomes an emotional powerhouse as well as an intellectual one,” is richly facilitated by the teachings in liberal arts and humanities. Florini refers to the basic satisfaction that forensic science is increasingly used to help exonerate the innocent and establishing links between individuals and criminal activities.

Bridging justice gaps

With increased reliance on scientific services provided by multi-disciplinary (police, medicine, law, forensic science), and multi-organizational in the private and government sectors (health, justice, legal, police) practitioners, the potential for miscommunication resulting unjust outcomes increases. The importance of identifying effective multi-organisational information sharing is to prevent the ‘justice silo effect’; where practitioners from different organisations operate in isolation with minimal or no interaction. This paper presents the findings from the second part of the Interfaces Project, an Australia-wide study designed to assess the extent of the justice silos. We interviewed 121 police, forensic scientists, lawyers, judges, coroners, pathologists and forensic physicians. The first paper With increased reliance on multi-disciplinary, multi-agency forensic service delivery, the potential for miscommunication resulting in unjust outcomes also increases, especially in serious criminal matters, such as child or adult sexual assault investigations.

Interdisciplinary coordination challenges

The more serious the matter, the more likely that multidisciplinary and multi-agency personnel (health, justice, police, child Protection, education, private legal/medical/allied-health) are involved. Inter-disciplinary difference adds to the investigative complexity and increases the risk of vital evidence being missed or miscommunicated, particularly if inter-agency information sharing is problematic or not common. Further, many of these personnel working within different fields will have divergent work practices and differing views on what their role is in a sexual assault investigation, or how and if they should meet during criminal investigations or court trials. An example of a “justice silo” occurred in Australia. Jama (FJ) was convicted of a rape he did not commit and sentenced to six years imprisonment. No other circumstantial evidence was presented at trial and the jury’s verdict rested on the basis of DNA evidence alone. In December 2009, it became apparent that there was a problem with the original DNA swabs (contamination of the swabs) and a prosecutor from the Victorian Public Prosecutions Office advised the Victorian Court of Appeal in Melbourne.