From the Dean

Welcome to UMHS!

It is indeed a great pleasure and privilege to start a new journey in my academic career as the Dean of Basic Sciences at UMHS.

The enthusiastic commitment of the President and Provost for student success, and the enviable track record, are what made me decide to join the team. I come here with a wide spectrum of global experience in teaching, clinical service, and research over the past 45 years encompassing stints in India, Africa, the Middle East, the UK, Canada, and the Caribbean, involving students and faculty from several countries, cultures, social backgrounds, and ethnicities. I look forward to harnessing these cumulative experiences to enhance the already superlative efforts for student success at UMHS in educating tomorrow’s doctors.

I strongly believe in the philosophy- “teach a person how to cook and he will feed himself for the rest of his life”. Teaching a student how to think is far more crucial than teaching facts related to information. The current generation of students is far smarter than ours in collecting information and sharing it.  The disease patterns are constantly evolving. The facts taught today might become irrelevant in a few hours. What is it that we can provide in lectures that are not easily available in already existing sources of information like textbooks, web resources, review publications, etc.?

We will encourage active learning and focus on “how does this happen, why does this happen and what are the consequences to the patient, rather than what is it”. The emphasis shifts from gathering and memorizing information to analysis, interpretation, and problem-solving. This requires a solid foundation of learning objectives which form the basis of what we teach, how we teach, and how we assess. One should explore opportunities to enable students to become lifelong learners. The faculty should consider what competencies in their discipline are vital for an average practicing doctor. We should focus on critical components that the students must acquire and fine-tune them with critical clinical reasoning.

Our customer is the community that our students will be serving. Hence, we have to encompass components beyond the factual information in our teaching and assessment, including professional behaviors, communication skills, and components of diversity, equity, and inclusion. One simple way of looking at cultural competence is to think about features of another culture that make us feel uncomfortable, and try not only to understand them but internalize them. The current practice of medicine revolves around team efforts. We need to explore ways to incorporate this in our curriculum to prepare them well. The present generation of students, Gen X, will be dealing with a lot of patients belonging to the baby boomer generation. The students need to learn how to communicate effectively and care for them with compassion. They have to remember that each patient is unique and that the diseases do not read the textbooks.

My efforts would be to provide a safe, welcoming, and inclusive atmosphere that leads to an equal and fair opportunity to succeed for all the students, faculty, and staff, irrespective of their backgrounds, cultural beliefs, practices, and individual preferences. The opportunity to touch so many lives personally, positively, and professionally is a blessing and I am looking forward to continuing to be a good leader and role model. It is a collective journey to succeed.  These are exciting challenges to deal with. I am fortunate to be teaming up with very experienced and enthusiastic faculty in the university blessed by the compassionate and supportive top leadership.

Shivayogi Bhusnurmath, M.B.B.S., MD Pathology, FRCPath (London, UK)
Dean of Basic Sciences
UMHS, St. Kitts campus