BACKGROUND There is considerable uncertainty about the future of undergraduate medical education in the face of several important challenges. This paper highlights many of the complexities of the challenges facing medical school leadership today. DISCUSSION A major challenge facing medical education in the United States is the erosion of the clinical environment, the loss of clinical revenues...

BACKGROUND The British medical student population has undergone rapid diversification over the last decades. This study focuses on medical students' views about their experiences in relation to ethnicity and gender during their undergraduate training within the context of the hidden curriculum in one British medical school as part of a wider qualitative research project into undergraduate medic...

OBJECTIVE Aga Khan University, a private medical college, had a vision of producing physicians who are not only scientifically competent, but also socially sensitive, the latter by exposure of medical students to a broad-based curriculum. The objective of this study was to identify the genesis of broad-based education and its integration into the undergraduate medical education program as the H...

OBJECTIVE The introduction of medical humanities (MH) in undergraduate medical education in Italy has been an issue of debate since the 90's and few years later it was extended to other healthcare degrees. The aims of this Italian literature review, after considering the international scene, are: to evaluate the extent to which the interest in this subject has gradually developed throughout the...

The Medical School was founded in 1905 in response to the need to train doctors for Singapore. In 2005, this School, now the Faculty of Medicine in the National University of Singapore, will celebrate her 100th year. This brief review attempts to chronicle the way in which the medical course has been designed over the years to address the principal aims of undergraduate medical education. From ...

BACKGROUND Clinical teachers in medical schools are faced with the challenging task of delivering high-quality patient care, producing high-impact research and contributing to undergraduate medical education all at the same time. Little is known on the gap between an 'ideal' environment supporting clinical teachers to provide high quality teaching for their students and the reality of clinical ...

CONTEXT Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking sites, are creating new challenges for medical professionalism. The scope of this problem in undergraduate medical education is not well-defined. OBJECTIVE To assess the experience of US medical schools with online posting of unprofessional content by students and existing medical school policies to address online posting. DESIGN, SETT...

Medical training is challenging and parenting is a full-time responsibility. Balancing a family with the significant demands of medical school is a daunting endeavor. Yet there is little research available to guide students, faculty, or administrators. Using one U.S. medical school as a case study, this article provides a comprehensive overview of the common personal and professional challenges...

BACKGROUND As assessment has been shown to direct learning, it is critical that the examinations developed to test clinical competence in medical undergraduates are valid and reliable. The use of extended matching questions (EMQ) has been advocated to overcome some of the criticisms of using multiple-choice questions to test factual and applied knowledge. METHODS We analysed the results from ...

It has long been recognised that intensive efforts are needed to reform medical education in order to meet the future needs of populations worldwide. Pressure for changes to the organisation, content and delivery of both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education has greatly increased in the last two decades. The experience of innovative medical schools, the emergence of learner-centred t...