Workshop on Undergraduate Medical Curriculum

Curriculum development is dynamic process. It cannot remain static. It has to be changed to the requirements of modern age and local needs. Our institutions should no lag behind. They must have access to modern and more appropriate system of learning, it was stated by Dr.Sohail Altaf, Secretary Health Govt of NWFP during his address as chief guest in the inaugural session of a three days workshop on “Undergraduate Medical Curriculum” organized by Kyber Medical University (KMU), Peshawar here at Institute of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (IPM&R), Hayatabad Medical Complex Peshawar.
He while criticizing the present curriculum said that the underpracticed curriculum in our medical institutions is only stress on seeking knowledge while that of Problem Based Learning (PBL) is based on life long and self directed learning and it is also less costly. He suggested that a pilot projet may be started  for adoptation of PBL on a small scale at any one of the medical college of the province. He stressed that faculty involvement for cahnge in undergraduate curriculum is very essintial and they should be kept on board while introducing new curriculum.
Dr. Sohail Altaf said we must acknowledged the efforts of KMU and especially of its dynamic VC for changing the almost one hundred years old curriculum of undergraduate medical education.He hoped that all the participants will learn a lot from this workshop, but the real beneficiary will be our young medical students and patients of the province as well.
Earlier while talking to the inaugural session VC KMU Prof. Dr. Mohamamd Hafizullah said that the current undergraduate medical curriculum was introduced almost 100 years ago. This is a system base curriculum where all subjects are taught in isolation with  no relevance to each other. In almost all the medical schools in the developed countries the curriculum has been changed to PBL. Even in our own country some of the medical colleges have introduced this change either totally or partially like Agha Khan Univerisity, Shifa International Medical College, Rawalpindi Medical College and Peshawar Medical College.
 He said a number of workshops have been conducted both in Khyber Medical College and Ayub Medical College on the development of new curriculum, but no serious attempt has been made to implement the changes in the curriculum. KMU has taken up this challenge. First it took principals of all the public sector medical colleges on a tour of the leading medical institutions in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.  The team specially studied their curricula and evaluation system. KMU then started the training of the faculty members in changing the curriculum.
Prof. Hafizullah said that KMU has already conducted a number of workshops both for the faculty of public and private medical colleges, engaging resource persons from Agha Khan, Shifa International and from Rawalpindi Medical College.In the last workshop a number of modules were allotted to various medical colleges for development. They have been prepared and will be discussed in this workshop. These modules will be refined hopefully and will implement in the near future. Prof. Dr. Shad Mohammad Director Academics KMU and Dr. Shiella Pinjani from Aga Khan University Karachi also addressed the workshop