• Medical education · Aug 2008

    Lessons learned about integrating a medical school curriculum: perceptions of students, faculty and curriculum leaders.

    • Jessica H Muller, Sharad Jain, Helen Loeser, and David M Irby.
    • Department of Family and Community Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143-0900, USA. mullerj@fcm.ucsf.edu
    • Med Educ. 2008 Aug 1; 42 (8): 778-85.

    ObjectiveRecent educational reform in US medical schools has created integrated curricular structures. This study investigated how stakeholders in a newly integrated curriculum - students, course directors and curriculum leaders - define integration and perceive its successes and challenges during its first year.MethodsWe conducted interviews with curriculum reform leaders, course directors and first year medical students. Interview transcripts were analysed for themes, which were compared within and across stakeholder groups.ResultsThree curriculum leaders, four Year 1 course directors and six Year 1 medical students were interviewed. Fifteen students participated in a group interview. Four major themes emerged: interdisciplinary teaching; interdisciplinary faculty collaboration; building curricular links, and sequencing and framing curricular content. Cross-group analysis revealed participant agreement that an integrated curriculum required interdisciplinary teaching, clinical application and careful oversight. Differences among groups were also identified. Faculty (course directors and curriculum leaders) discussed faculty collaboration and the challenges of faculty buy-in and course implementation. Students highlighted the impact of integration on their learning and the challenges of sequencing and scaffolding content. Both students and course directors focused on course monitoring and conceptual links for student learning.ConclusionsIntegrating a curriculum is a complex process. It is differentially understood and experienced by students and faculty, and can refer to instructional method, content, faculty work or synthesis of knowledge in the minds of learners. It can occur at different rates and some subjects are integrated more easily than others. We point to some specific considerations as medical schools embark on curriculum reform.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…