UCPH to lead national initiative transforming clinical medical education
With a DKK 5.8 million grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Copenhagen will lead a new national collaboration involving all four Danish universities that educate medical doctors. The PREPARE project will develop a shared digital framework for assessing clinical competencies and providing medical students with structured feedback during their clinical training.
Clinical training is a fundamental part of medical education. However, because it takes place across numerous hospitals, departments and medical specialties, the ways in which students’ clinical competencies are observed, assessed and documented can vary considerably.
The Department of Clinical Medicine (IKM) at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, will now lead a national effort to address this challenge. The project brings together the clinical institutes and educational environments at the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, Aalborg University and the University of Southern Denmark.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has awarded DKK 5.8 million to the three-year project, for which Head of Department Nicolai Albrechtsen is the main applicant and project lead.
“This grant gives us a unique opportunity to bring Denmark’s four medical universities together around a shared ambition for clinical education. IKM and SUND will lead the project, but its strength lies in its national foundation and shared ownership. Our goal is to develop a framework that can be used across universities, hospitals and clinical specialties – and ultimately give all medical students clearer feedback and a more transparent progression in their clinical competencies,” says Nicolai Albrechtsen, Head of the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.
A shared national framework for clinical assessment
PREPARE will develop, pilot and evaluate a digital framework for programmatic assessment in undergraduate clinical education. The framework will enable clinical teachers to document observations made during real clinical work, provide concise and structured feedback and follow students’ competency development over time.
National learning objectives will be translated into observable clinical tasks, such as history taking, clinical examination, diagnostic reasoning and communication. The digital framework will bring these observations together across clinical rotations, giving students a clearer overview of their development and helping them identify areas in which further learning is needed.
An AI-supported feedback assistant will also be explored to help clinical teachers formulate concise and structured feedback. Responsibility for assessment will remain with the clinical teacher.
The framework will be developed with clinical educators, students, study boards and educational units and subsequently tested in different specialties and clinical environments at all four universities. This national approach is intended to ensure that the solution works across institutions and can be scaled throughout Denmark.
Connecting undergraduate and postgraduate medical training
Beyond improving feedback during medical school, PREPARE will help strengthen the connection between undergraduate medical education and postgraduate specialist training, where competency-based assessment is already more systematically established.
“PREPARE addresses a central challenge in medical education: how we ensure consistent, high-quality assessment and feedback when clinical teaching is distributed across many different settings. By combining national collaboration with strong project leadership from IKM and SUND, the project has the potential to create lasting improvements in medical education and support a smoother transition from medical school to postgraduate training,” says Jørgen Kurtzhals, Vice-Dean for Education at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen.
The project will evaluate whether the framework increases the frequency and quality of feedback, improves transparency in students’ competency development and supports clinical teachers in integrating assessment into busy clinical workflows.
In the longer term, PREPARE could provide Denmark with a common national infrastructure for clinical competency assessment. This would strengthen collaboration between universities and hospitals, create greater continuity throughout medical education and help prepare future doctors to provide safe, effective and high-quality care to patients across Denmark.
National project partners
The project is led by the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with:
- Department of Clinical Medicine, Aalborg University
- Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University
- Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark
- Department of Regional Health Research, University of Southern Denmark
Together, the five clinical departments provide PREPARE with national reach across all four Danish universities that educate medical doctors.