VI.ii STATEMENT: Is the Current Integrated Approach to the Medical Curriculum Obscuring What Students Need to Learn for Clinical Practice?
摘要
As medical knowledge has increased, the undergraduate curriculum has had to adapt to include an ever-expanding volume of new material. Regulation of medical education and training in the United Kingdom is through the General Medical Council, and, following the publication of Tomorrow’s Doctors: Recommendations on Undergraduate Medical Education (General Medical Council, 1993), the curriculum has undergone marked changes in more recent years. The more traditional structure of pre-clinical and clinical years has largely been replaced by an integrated, systems approach to learning (Mattick et al., 2004) which has resulted in some subjects traditionally regarded as core elements and taught as ‘blocks’, with their own assessment system and exam papers, becoming increasingly marginalised. This integrated approach has followed a general trend in education at all levels (Drake & Reid, 2020), and this chapter considers if this is appropriate in medical education and if it supports the needs both of the practising doctor and of the medical profession (Buja, 2019).