Drawbacks in the Implementation of an Integrated Medical Curriculum at Medical Schools and Their Potential Solutions
Ihab Shafek Atta, Mohamed Atta El-Hag, Salma Ihab Shafek, Hasan S. AL-Ghamdi, Thamer Alghamdi
Abstract
This study aims to explore the shortcomings in the implementation of an integrated medical curriculum to recommend solutions to overcome them. The study included 284 participants, including 220 medical students from different medical schools (Albaha University, Al-Azhar University and Cairo University), 52 faculty members and 12 administrative members. A well-formed questionnaire containing both qualitative and quantitative components was designed to evaluate the main aspects of the integrated curriculum. The quantitative items were scored on a Likert scale of one to five, and an independent t-test was used to analyse the results. The major pitfalls reported from the students were that the integrated curriculum is more stressful, a lot number of courses, the consecutive arrangement of the courses and a high number of assessments. The major pitfalls reported from the faculty members include missing many subject areas, limited cooperation among disciplines, students can pass the course without achieving the minimum requirements in each discipline, students can leave out some disciplines according to their weight in the course, and they can, therefore, pass the programme without identifying their shortcomings in each discipline separately. The major pitfalls reported from administrative staff includes staff resistance to student-centered activity and the costs of catering to a problem-based learning environment and providing additional equipment. The present findings point to the need for clear policy charts by the administration, the implementation of a faculty development programme, well-equipped teaching/learning rooms and learning resources, in order to improve the efficiency of implementation of the integration programme.