New Curriculum at Kyungpook National University School of Medicine

Lee, Yoo Chul; Kang, Duk Sik; Kang, Echeol; Kwak, Yun Sik; Kim, Bo Wan; Chang, Bong Hyun; Cho, Dong Kyu; Cho, Hee Jung

Abstract

The curriculum reform was undertaken at Kyungpook National University School of Medicine (KNUSM) to meet new educational objectives in order to cope with a rapid societal changes anticipated occurring in 21st century. The KNUSM Curriculum Development Committee was charged to formulate a new curriculum, which consisted of enhancement of patient-centered care based clerkship, integrated courses based on organ systems, problem-based learning, and additional teaching on social medicine, medical informatics and biomedical engineering. The philosophy of this curricular reform has been to modify methods of teaching medical students toward self-directed learning and student-centered. This whole concept was a drastic departure from the traditional lecturing. In the new curriculum, total of 180 credit courses, 4395 hours to graduate medical school were reduced to 170 credit courses, 4250 hours. As a part of the social medicine course, a 2 credit-hour course on patient-doctor relationship was taught and two credit-hour PBL tutorials were added to freshman, sophomore and junior years. In order to carry out this education reform, three new departments were inaugurated such as Biomedical Engineering, Medical Informatics and Medical Education. The school facility has also been improved during this preparatory period. The new curriculum has been implemented in 1999 academic year after approximately 4 years of preparatory period and annual faculty workshops have been held to monitor the progress of the reform and improve courses by evaluating impact of the change on both faculty members and students as well. The interim evaluation revealed several issues remained to be resolved. In conclusion, the acceptance of this reform was excellent from both faculty members and students although there have been continuous problem solving and adjustments necessary. The real assessment of the outcome of the reform requires many years to come and there has to be continuous monitoring of the progress and adjustment of curriculum are the pivotal of a success of the sort of education reform.