Curriculum management/monitoring in undergraduate medical education: a systematized review.

BACKGROUND: Monitoring and management of undergraduate medical education (UME) curricula are crucial contributors to successful medical education. This systematized review explores the different approaches that medical schools have to UME curriculum management or monitoring in order to provide a basis for curriculum managers. METHODS: PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, and ERIC were searched with no time limitation using the keywords curriculum, medicine, management, monitoring, and alignment. Advanced search options and Boolean operators 'AND' and 'OR' were also used to find more relevant records. RESULTS: From a total of 673 records, 14 articles along with 7 papers from hand searching and snowballing were included in the review. Documents were categorized into 3 groups of UME curriculum management: developing computerized tools, surveying curriculum stakeholders and reviewing curriculum documents, and introducing managerial structures. CONCLUSIONS: Different approaches are reported for UME curriculum management/monitoring at different levels. Managerial structures and computerized tools are most frequently used at the college level because of the large number of faculty members who are responsible for the UME curriculum delivery and the large amount of complex curriculum information. Surveys and reviews of curriculum documents are used mostly to manage a part of a UME curriculum or to monitor teaching of a certain subject during all or some of the educational years.

Online assessment in two consequent semesters during COVID-19 pandemic: K-means clustering using data mining approach.

BACKGROUND: Education and assessment have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic so that online courses replaced face-to-face classes to observe the social distance. The quality of online assessments conducted during the pandemic is an important subject to be addressed. In this study, the quality of online assessments held in two consecutive semesters was investigated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: One thousand two hundred and sixty-nine multiple-choice online examinations held in the first (n = 535) and second (n = 734) semesters in Birjand University of Medical Sciences during 2020-2021 were examined. Mean, standard deviation, number of questions, skewness, kurtosis, difficulty, and discrimination index of tests were calculated. Data mining was applied using the k-means clustering approach to classify the tests. RESULTS: The mean percentage of answers to all tests was 69.97 ± 19.16, and the number of questions was 34.48 ± 18.75. In two semesters, there was no significant difference between the difficulty of examinations (P = 0.84). However, there was a significant difference in the discrimination index, skewness, and kurtosis of tests (P < 0.001). Moreover, according to the results of the clustering analysis in the first semester, 43% of the tests were very hard, 16% hard, and 7% moderate. In the second semester, 43% were hard, 16% moderate, and 41% easy. CONCLUSION: To evaluate the tests' quality, calculating difficulty and discrimination indices is not sufficient; many factors can affect the quality of tests. Furthermore, the experience of the first semester had changed characteristics of the second-semester examinations. To enhance the quality of online tests, establishing appropriate rules to hold the examinations and using questions with higher taxonomy are recommended.

General practitioners' encounters in rural and urban care centers in Isfahan with gynecological/obstetric and pediatric diseases.

CONTEXT: General practitioners should be competent to be accountable for patients' needs, but they do not acquire core competencies during education in medical schools. AIMS: This study was aimed at determine the most usual obstetric and gynecological as well as pediatric diseases in rural and urban care centers in Isfahan province. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: This is a cross-sectional descriptive study which was done in Isfahan province in 2011. Sixty-four physicians (general practitioners) in rural and urban health care centers in Isfahan province participated in this study. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Participants completed valid and reliable questionnaires for gynecological/obstetric and pediatric diseases. These questionnaires included some demographic data and diseases of each category (according to general medicine curriculum). Scales 1-5 for each disease referral times was determined respectively as: Rare, sometimes, weekly to monthly, daily to weekly and daily. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: The data were descriptively analyzed by SPSS 11.5(SPSS Inc. in Chicago). RESULTS: Nearly 43.7% of participants were male. The mean age of participants was 39.0 ± 7.0 and their mean working experience was 11.3 ± 5.9 years. The highest referral times' score in rural and urban care centers in gynecological and obstetric group was vaginal discharge; in pediatrics, it was the common cold. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, the extent to which general practitioners encountered different gynecological/obstetric and pediatric diseases in rural and urban care centers in Isfahan province was determined. Although, these data are useful for decision makers to establish medical core curriculum, other factors such as seasonal load of diseases should also be observed to determine the differences between rural and urban care centers in most usual diseases of women and children.

Effects of "Teaching Method Workshop" on general surgery residents' teaching skills.

INTRODUCTION: Residents have an important role as teachers and need to know about teaching, teaching methods and skills. In developed countries, "resident-as-teacher" programs have been implemented progressively; but there is little information about this theme in developing countries such as Iran. This study aimed to determine effects of "teaching method" workshop on surgical residents' teaching skills in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this quasi-experimental study, 18 residents in 1(st), 2(nd), and 3(rd) years of surgical residency in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences have attended in a 10-hour workshop. Two questionnaires (validity and reliability) was verified: Clinical teaching self-assessment and clinical teaching evaluation was completed before and after the intervention ("teaching method" workshop) by attending residents and rater interns, respectively. Paired-samples T-test was used to analyze collecting data. RESULTS: After intervention, Self-assessment mean scores were increased in two categories: feedback from 3.34 to 3.94 (P = 0.011) and promoting self- directed learning from 3.53 to 4.02 (P = 0.009); whereas, there was no significant differences in evaluation mean scores. CONCLUSION: Statistical results from self-assessment and evaluation scores show little improvement in residents' teaching skills after the intervention, but residents assessed the workshop as useful. Lack of motivation in interns and little reward for residents who attend in educational activities could be responsible for these results. So, to promote role of residents' as teachers, we offer revision in residency curriculum and residents' formal duties as well as designing educational programs in teaching theme based on our needs and resources.