A five-day international workshop on "Curriculum Development" concluded here at the University of Health Sciences (UHS) on Saturday with a strong note that each medical college should set up or restructure its own Medical Education department, under the supervision of UHS, to train the faculty in innovative instruction and evaluation strategies.
Director of the Division of studies in Medical Education at the University of Alberta, Canada, Professor David A. Cook, facilitated the workshop. Senior teachers of affiliated medical colleges also participated.
Dr Cook said that training of physicians was emphasised during the latter part of the 20th century and major changes had been made, particularly in the early year's curriculum. Despite that, there were evident problems in existing methods of educating medical students, and changes in society in general and healthcare in particular had generated additional pressures for further changes in medical education.
He observed that there was a need to further strengthen the educational role of community health and family medicine, to increase emphasis on preparing physicians to function in a team environment and an increased appreciation of the role of the physician as a catalyst for positive change in healthcare delivery-both locally and globally.
Dr Cook also discussed the pros and cons of the departmental control of the curriculum and the issues of centralising curriculum. He elaborated various instruction strategies including traditional lecture, problem-based learning, case-presentation, apprenticeship, self-directed and anarchy.
In his address UHS vice-chancellor, Professor Malik Hussain Mubbashar urged the participants to be innovative and able to think out of the box. He said that UHS had revised 4 decades old curriculum and "next year we would be able to inject some brilliant teachers into the veins of medical education". He informed the participants that extensive on-campus research was going on in 59 different areas.
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