At the faculty, there are more than 900 students. Among them, about 5 percent are excellent students; almost half have a grade of “good” and “excellent”. One in five students participates in research as part of a student research group. Their results were presented at the final scientific conferences of the University, as well as in other institutions of higher education in Ukraine and abroad.
Among teachers, who taught to students of the 2nd Medical Faculty, there are a lot of prominent figures in Ukrainian Healthcare: Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, Laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine, Honorary Citizen of Kharkiv and Kharkiv Region, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Honorary Professor of KhNMU Lisovy V.M.; People’s Deputy of Ukraine, Member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Health Care of Ukraine, Academician of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, Honorary Citizen of Kharkiv Region, Head of the Northeastern Research Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, Honored Doctor of Ukraine, Honored Worker of Science and Technology Of Ukraine, Professor of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Internal Medicine, Honorary Professor of KhNMU Bilovol O.M.; Head of the Department of Internal Medicine № 2 and Clinical Immunology and Allergology named after Academician L.T. Malaya KhNMU, Honored Professor of KhNMU, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Higher Education of Ukraine, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Kravchun P.G.; Head of the Department of Nervous Diseases № 1, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Honored Professor of KSMU, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine, Academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Association of Neurologists of Kharkiv region Grigorova I.A.
Kharkiv National Medical University is one of the recognized leaders among medical universities of Ukraine in the field of implementation of distance learning technologies in the educational process. Within the State Digitalization Program, at the 2nd Medical Faculty, the Academic Council of the University together with the Dean’s office team has pioneered the implementation of the «Digital Deanery» project, which acts as an organizational center that manages the work of the University.
The Dean’s Office performs the functions of administrative support and coordination of the educational process together with the document storage. The Deanery activities are aimed at forming a unified educational space through the development and testing of regulatory and technological documentation for the examination of information and educational resources.
Today, the faculty is one of the leading ones among higher medical education establishments in Ukraine in training doctors through well-organized fast modern communication between teachers and students. Continuous development of distance learning tools and software requires active use of learning and communication platforms, so we successfully implemented Moodle, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and a set of tools and services Google “G Suite for Education”. Representatives of the 2nd Medical Faculty were the first who had started to develop and apply new forms of education; later they became able to train representatives of other faculties. Thus, the development of distance learning is realized through multifaceted work carried out at the departments of the faculty.
Today educational work with students is an important part of the faculty. Efforts in this direction are focused on improving professional training, adherence to academic discipline, and education of a comprehensively developed personality.
The work plan of the faculty includes the following areas of educational work:
1) organizational activities, national-patriotic education;
2) moral education;
3) aesthetic education;
4) physical education, etc.
Note that the main purpose of education is not to educate a specialist in any field. First of all, the purpose of education is to nurture a highly moral person who will become the mind and driving force of the nation!
The Deanery and teams of attached departments actively identify the most capable applicants for higher education and encourage them to scientific creativity in the fields of fundamental and applied disciplines. This is evidenced by the experience of the student scientific society and the results of participation in All-Ukrainian students’ Olympiads.
Among the most important aspects of the ideological content of the educational process, preference is given to strengthening the moral and deontological direction in the teaching of disciplines at the departments of the faculty.
A commission on educational work headed by the Dean of the faculty has been established and operates at the 2nd Medical Faculty. The commission consists of Deputy Deans responsible for educational work at the departments of the faculty, Student Government President, and Chairman of the Student Council of the dormitory № 2. One of the areas of the commission is educational work in the dormitory, which has a special focus on crime prevention.
The 2nd Medical Faculty traditionally focuses on ensuring the required level of content and scope of work in the leading areas of the faculty: improving the organizational and methodological level of higher education, increasing demands and objectivity on the results of current and semester control, further development of in-service teacher training, support of scientific researches, preparation of scientific and pedagogical staff, development of student self-government together with forms of educational work.
Departmental teams are constantly improving working curricula by making additions and updates to modern material.
In order to evolve the Credit Transfer System, the departments improve the relevant educational and methodological support of the educational process. Also, they create textbooks and guidelines for independent and classroom work of students and teachers. There is a constant revision and addition of test tasks that allow us to control the process of preparation of students for classes and the degree of the material assimilation.
An important means of improving the efficiency of the educational process is to further increase the effectiveness of the rating of educational activities of higher education. The Dean’s Office and the Academic Council of the Faculty constantly pay attention to ensuring the unconditional implementation of the rating provisions by all departments, deepening inter-faculty integration in the organization of unified current control. Through the efforts of the Dean’s Office, computer programs have been developed and implemented to record performance and attendance.
The Academic Council of the Faculty and its commissions make a significant contribution to improving the work of the staff of the 2nd Medical Faculty. Among constantly working Commissions of the Academic Council, there are: the educational and methodical (Chairman – Prof. V.D. Babajan), coordination of research work (Assoc. Prof. O.S. Shevchenko), treatment and prevention work (Prof. O.M. Shelest), Council of Heads of Departments (Assoc. Prof. N.O. Gordienko). The commissions developed and implemented a number of proposals to improve the leading activities of the faculty, e.g. they introduced the lists of mandatory minimums of practical skills and analyzed the state of research work of departments and their staffing. Moreover, the commissions control pedagogical and professional development and investigate indicators and the results of treatment prevention work.
Analysis of the qualitative indicators of the success of the Comprehensive final exams in recent years shows that there is a steady performance improvement. In the frame of the preparation and conducting of Comprehensive State Exams, the Dean’s Office of the 2nd Medical Faculty created favorable conditions for the full implementation of inspection capabilities of the Chairman and members of the Accreditation Commission and objective assessment of the level of theoretical and practical knowledge formation in graduates.
The priority task for the future is the formation of objective preconditions for significant improvement of the control educational activities results, both semester and state level of certification, in applicants for higher education.
The work of the departments of the 2nd Medical Faculty continues in the direction of further improvement of methodological support of education, optimization of its content, profile integration of scientific and technical base, and practical skills. A significant amount of organizational and methodological work was carried out by the support departments to optimize the content of the relevant areas of training, and the development of new training programs.
One of the prospects for the development of the faculty is the introduction of student-centered learning practices in the educational process: the participation of students in the educational programs development and their choice of disciplines; and the introduction of modern practices in educational activities. The implementation of student-centered teaching and learning implies the following: respect and attention to the diversity of students and their needs, enabling flexible learning trajectories; usage of various pedagogical methods and ways to present material; regular evaluation and adjustment of pedagogical methods; developing a student’s sense of independence while providing appropriate mentoring and teacher support; development of mutual respect in the relationship between student and teacher; availability of appropriate procedures for responding to complaints.