Student review [#11349] for Medicine
at University of Turin

The main problems regarding the faculty of Medicine and Surgery in the University of Turin are linked to the way the classes and internship are delivered, to the facilities offered to the students and the school’s identity.

So, regarding the first point, it must be highlighted that lectures are still delivered to groups of 200 people from mostly old professors/clinicians whose priority is not educating or educating well but rather their clinical activities. They do not put any effort in being innovative and finding new, more involving and effective ways to teach their topic so everything is extremely theoretical with very little connection to the real hospital life. There are no workshops, no seminars, no little group activities; clinical cases are done very rarely before the last semester at the 6th year. Secondly we should also mention the way exams are organizes: most of the time are oral examinations that follow or not a written exams. Most of the time professors summon all the students in the morning and have them wait the whole day (or sometimes more days) while their fellow students are sitting the exam. Having a lot of oral exams in my opinion doesn’t allow the scores to be objective (one is usually asked 1 or 2 questions of a exam program of 1000 pages books) and the professor’s judgment might differ from a day to another or to the morning to the evening due to physiological tiredness. Also even the exams are very theoretical and not linked to the future daily clinical life. Passing to the internships, it must be said that most of the time the doctors are not aware that they should mentor students, big groups of students are assigned to the same doctor and little time is given to teaching (most of the time you just follow the doctor and listen); no practical activities are taught and the students-patient relationship is very rare. No responsibilities is given to students except during the thesis period when the students if they want can attend the ward daily (most of the time instead of attending classes or after classes at night).

About the facilities offered to medical students must be highlighted that there are not medical students area, there is no a medical faculty building: all students take classes in different buildings of the city (this is very uncomfortable for erasmus students that take lectures of different years and have to run from a place to another in no time) and there are not common areas except one little studying area in one building of the hospital. This means also: no common spaces for studying, no one medical library with books usable for studying (most of the books present in the small medical libraries that are spread around the hospitals are useless plus the time these libraries are opened is very limited), no canteens, no lockers, no common areas to get to know each other, to build a network, to organize events, to do students’ meetings and conferences. Better not to mention the students’ administrative offices, also spread around the city and with very limited time during when they are open which mostly are the same of classes/internship time.

Last but not least we should mention that the whole faculty (deans, educational committees) do not seem committed in evolving, improving, listening to the students. Things are always done the same, changes are very hard to make, no plans are made for the future in term of social accountability, teaching of new topics (such global health) and very little consideration is given to students opinion (also those who do erasmus abroad and see how medicine can be taught and lived differently).

Overall I would not recommend to study in Turin, but I must say that in most of Italian universities it works the same.