New curriculum requires interns to work in upazila health complexes for 15 days
MBBS students will require to take four professional exams, instead of the existing three, from the 2013–14 academic session under a new curriculum that has been put in force.
The curriculum that the government effected in March also requires each of the medical students enrolling for the 2013–14 session to work in upazila health complexes for 15 days during their one-year internship.
Jahedul Haque Basunia, registrar of the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council, which is the regulatory authority of medical dental basic and higher education, told New Age that the new curriculum would require students to take four professional exams or profs. The curriculum also has provisions for the evaluation of teachers along with students.
In order to ease the pressure on the students,
The new curriculum puts more emphasis practical education rather than on textbook teaching, he said. ‘A team of medical education experts headed by the director general of health services have worked for three years to design the curriculum.’
The curriculum that contains a national goal and a course objective has directed medical colleges to engage their students in various extra-curricular activities such as debates and sports.
Under the existing curriculum, which has been in force till the 2012–13 session, students had to study anatomy, psychology and biochemistry in for the first prof; pathology, microbiology, pharmacology, forensic medicine and community medicine for the second prof; and surgery, medicine and gynaecology for the final prof.
With the first and the third prof, as the fourth, remaining unchanged in the new curriculum, it requires students to study forensic medicine and community medicine for the second prof, which will take place two years and a half after the admission, and pathology, microbiology and pharmacology for the third prof, which will take place three years and a half after admission.
Professor (curriculum development and evaluation) M Humayun Kabir Talukder of the Centre for Medical Education, Bangladesh, who coordinated the expert committee working on the new MBBS curriculum, told New Age that the new curriculum had stopped the repetition of a particular disease being taught at various levels of the course.
He also said that the curriculum would require students to take part in extracurricular activities which will help them in decision making, leadership, communications, management and care giving.
‘Our students, who now only provide care, will also need to attain all the five qualities as described by the World Health Organisation to become five-star doctors,’ he said.
He said that the Centre for Medical Education, along with the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organisation, had designed the first-ever MBBS curriculum of the country in 1998.
Directorate General of Health Services officials said that there are 22 government and 54 private medical colleges offering MBBS degrees.
The curriculum that has so far been in force was introduced in 2002.
-With New Age input
