a critical appraisal of internal medicine residency curriculum approved in 2008

background and objective: residency curriculum development in clinical courses has been initiated in the ministry of health in recent years and the curriculum for internal medicine residency has been completed. regarding the role of critical appraisal in the improvement of these programs, this article will discuss advantages and disadvantages of the curriculum plan for internal medicine.   material and methods : in this study after reviewing all segments of the curriculum, we considered harden's criteria for curriculum developments as gold standard and compared the steps for developing the present curriculum to them.   results: student-centricity and problem-based learning have been well-considered by the developers in this curriculum and this is an advantage for this program. integration of general internal medicine to subspecialties courses also has been considered well in this program. students have not been involved sufficiently in the developing steps of the curriculum. furthermore an efficient management system was not considered for the integrated learning process. on the other hand a huge core and less elective courses in the curriculum make it difficult to be operational.   conclusion: the program might be operational if more attention is paid to management system reinforcement, involving students to get their feedback and considering them in the program evaluation.