The world changes around us in a blink of an eye, whether it’s visible or not. One source of proof is that the world changes through education and, more specifically, healthcare education. It is a really hard and challenging job for professors of healthcare to teach while supply and demand in the medical world changes. What healthcare majors have to learn is that the material will be different from year-to-year. It is very difficult to have to change the way professors teach because of the healthcare changes; I learned that first hand by just talking to a professor here at Southern Vermont College.

I wanted to talk to a professor that has been in their field for a while and had been a professor at more than one college. I began asking the radiologic science program coordinator about how she had to change the way she taught and the content that she taught in order to meet the new requirements. She began to tell me that the new material that they have to teach will be available to the educators every year before the college year begins. The material changes from year-to-year due to what is needed and what regulations the health organizations puts in place. The material is then given to students in the programs, but in a manner that they would be able to understand the new content.

Every year they evaluate the students performances and get an average range in areas of the program that students lack understanding in, and begin to focus on those areas a lot more. These weaknesses change from year-to-year. The professors are also able to take unofficial sample registries to see what they may look like to address new material in their program. This gives professors an idea on how they will ask  registry questions so they could include these in their curriculum. The one area that she said that students have an issue with is patient care. I bring this topic up because it is an important topic in healthcare. We need to have proper patient care in order to do our future jobs correctly. So this year she added this course in the beginning of the semester of the student’s junior year instead at the end, or the middle of, the student’s junior year. This way the students have a little background on patient care before they get into the clinical setting and have to learn it there.

Another reason why professors change the way they teach is not only because health care changes but because how students learn changes. The pattern of learning is changing from being non-visual and hands-on to being visual and hands-on. Professors, like the radiologic science coordinator, has to move away from what they are used to from being non-visual to being visual for teaching.

The world is changing and so are people and their needs. One day you could go into a clinical setting or a classroom setting and you could learn something, the next day you could go in and the material that you learned the day prior could be totally different. For students and for medical professionals, it is best to look at each day as it comes and all of the challenges that come with it.