A wealth of evidence for the effectiveness of progress testing in problem-based learning curricula has been collected in the Western academic world, but whether the progress testing can be equally effective in problem-based medical schools in resource-poor countries is a question that remains to be answered. In order to provide an initial answer to this question, we describe our experiences wit...

PURPOSE We aim to identify what potential bias factors affected students' overall course evaluation, and to observe what factors should be considered in the curriculum evaluation system of medical schools. METHODS This study analyzed students' ratings of preclinical instructions at the Ajou University School of Medicine. The ratings of instructions involved 41 first-year and 45 second-year me...

Since all doctors at some point in their career will be faced with their role as a teacher, it appears desirable that future doctors are educated in didactic skills. At present, however, there are no formal opportunities for developing didactic skills at the majority of Dutch medical faculties. The main question of this study is: How do medical interns perceive the quality and quantity of their...

With the competing pressures facing medical school faculty, teaching is no longer considered a top priority. For many reasons, both internal and external, patient care and research activities receive more recognition and financial support than teaching. Most physicians believe they teach well and are frequently correct despite their lack of formal training on the art and science of medical educ...

Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (Noonday Press, 1997) is widely used in "cultural competence" efforts within U.S. medical school curricula. This article addresses the relationship between theory, narrative form, and teaching through a close critical reading of that book that is informed by theories o...

There is a shortage of physicians to care for underserved populations. Medical educators at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University have used five years of Health Resources and Services Administration funding to train medical students to provide outstanding primary care for underserved populations. The grant has two major goals: 1) to increase the number of graduating medical stude...

Although it is commonly assumed that the quality of medical school education in Australia is uniformly high, there is no national process for assessing its outcomes. There is substantial variability in the content of medical school curricula, and the process of curriculum change is becoming more challenging because of intense competition for time and space in the course. A national exit examina...

Many of the exciting conceptual and scientific advances in the field of psychosomatic medicine are not taught in United States medical schools. This article, based on the Presidential Address given at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society in Phoenix, Arizona in March 2003, reviews the rationale for integrating psychosomatic medicine into medical curricula, identifies educatio...

T here is not much data available on Turkish medicine before the acceptance of the Islamic religion. Medical history goes back to the eighth century, the time of the Uygurs and Orhun Turks. During this period surgeons from neighboring countries had an influence on Turkish medicine and some written data were established. Physicians were educated in hospitals in a “master-knight” relation. When l...