The expression from bedside to bench and back again came to designate a need felt by clinical researchers and scientists, for a closer dialogue. A new paradigm is intended, where this obvious benefit for the patient can emerge from the bridge between these two worlds. This idea, also known as reverse translation, intends not to miss opportunities for the challenges of scientific research that, with knowledge of the reality of clinical problems, can be directly directed towards their resolution.
However, this dialogue is neither easy nor immediate! It turns out that the languages, expression of a mentality modulated by the laboratory or the clinic, are not the same and maintain borders that are not always easy to cross. The search for a solution to this “gap” is the objective of the recently created “Postgraduate in Fundamentals of Medicine”, resulting from a protocol between the Champalimaud Foundation and the Clinical Academic Center, Algarve Biomedical Center (ABC), through the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Algarve (UAlg). Always with clinical excellence on the horizon of researchers at the Champalimaud Foundation, the PBL (Problem-Based Learning) of the UAlg Integrated Masters in Medicine is the required method for teaching the Fundamentals of Medicine. In the words of Dr. Silveira Botelho, Vice-President of the Champalimaud Foundation, “in Portugal, only these two institutions would be able to start this path”.
In this PBL training, the student (in this case the scientist) is not a passive element, sitting in a classroom taking notes, but the main generator of knowledge by actively seeking the information they need to solve a given problem in a concrete clinical situation. The PBL is a system particularly suited to graduates as it is strongly based on independence, responsibility, knowledge, maturity and their ability to work. Taking into account the profile of the graduates of this first course, we foresee great success for this Postgraduate Course in Fundamentals of Medicine, which began on October 6, 2020.
