Alejandro Muñoz, Professor of Rheumatology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Seville.
Every year, the students of the Medicine degree choose the one who has been their “best teacher” among all the teaching staff of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Seville. This 2022, for the second consecutive year, Alejandro Munoz Jimenez has been recognized with this award, an award that has been possible thanks to three keys: new technologies such as TikTok, passion and connecting with the reality of the profession.
Muñoz specializes in Rheumatology at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, work that adds to the teaching and the coordination of the students of the Faculty of Medicine. The recognition given by his students has been “a surprise, because last year it was the award that made me most excited and with this new recognition now the work we have been doing is confirmed from the Rheumatism Service of the Virgen del Rocío Hospital during these two years”.
The key to connecting with students and making your classes an open and continuous learning space lies in three pillars. The first of these is part of the doctor’s own personality, “you have to be a passionate regarding what you doif you are passionate regarding your work, you are capable of transferring it and making the students feel that way”.
But the classes are not only filled with passion and vocation. Connect with students poses a challenge to teachers in all areas, since the generation gap It is verifiable between students and teachers. Thus, Muñoz emphasizes that “you have to know the student and young people very well”, for this this teacher raised at the beginning of his teaching career “download apps like TikTokand I began to be interested in what the metaverse is, trap and rap and that is the fundamental piece, a teacher cannot be dissociated from the student socially speaking”. Thus, during his teaching, Muñoz emphasizes that “I use TikTok to improve my classes, with videos and music that students know and understand because they are part of their daily lives.”
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“A teacher cannot be socially dissociated from the student” |
Las new technologies are thus presented as basic tools to get to know the students, because although “it is not a sine qua non condition, but it is necessary that in the middle of a class we can connect with the student, with an example that is not the typical historicist or football, that is an example that is in your world, from TikTok or social networks. This makes the student follow you.”
Finally, the third way for Medicine classes to be something more than a repertoire of data lies in explain reality. Something basic but not always taken into account. Thus, Muñoz points out that “many times the theoretical class is dissociated from what Medicine is and how it is carried out in a real way”, a situation that is solved with the “involvement and connection between the class and the real world, something that is fundamental”.
Train doctors without neglecting other professions
Although the lack of specialists is a reality throughout the national territoryAlejandro Muñoz’s experience as a teacher warns of the need to take into account the different profiles that are found in the classrooms of the Medicine degree.
“The Faculty of Medicine is very polyhedralthe doctor must not only know how to pass a consultation or enter an operating room, it is important that we also know how to prepare scientists or future management positions”, explains Muñoz.
At this point, from the teaching perspective, the importance of knowing “texture the studentsthat is, the student is not a homogeneous entity, he has his concerns and not everyone has to end up as a surgeon or specialist, there are also research or health management outlets. It is important to attract that student and place him in an attractive path for him so that he does not abandon the degree”.
For future students who pass through the Medicine classrooms, Muñoz presents clear advice, “to be a doctor you have to be good people, who be honest with yourself and above all getting up every morning with the firm vocation to do it well, with these three things I think success is assured”.
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