Special Pathology in the course content of third year MBBS : views of students and teachers

Abstract

Objective: The students and teachers are major stakeholders whenever there is a change in the curriculum. Objective of the study was to assess the views of Third Year MBBS students and college teachers involved in teaching Third Year MBBS class regarding the inclusion of special pathology to the already cumbersome course content. Methods: It was a cross-sectional descriptive study carried out over a period of eight months from April, 2019 to December, 2019.An online questionnaire was used to collect the data from 110 third year MBBS students and 35 medical college teachers involved in teaching the third year MBBS class at HBS Medical & Dental College, Islamabad, Pakistan. The questionnaire contained open ended questions along with a short questionnaire based on 3-point Likert scale for a semi-quantitative analysis. The open ended responses in the interviews were assessed using Mayring’s qualitative context analysis. The similar comments were bundled up as the comments were sequentially processed and the replicates were grouped. The responses were then ranked by the number of times they were selected using Microsoft Excel 2013 and SPSS 21. Results: A total of 105 medical students and 32 medical teachers participated in the study. n=94 (89.5%) of the students agreed that the content taught was incoherent and n= 92 (88%)agreed that the time allocation for the various modules was inappropriate. The important reservation of the students was that the assessment strategies of the past continued to prevail and they were not aligned with the change in the curriculum. They suggested to spread Pathology over four years of MBBS so that true integration can be done. The top ranked reason amongst the students who were in favor of this system was that they could easily leave microbiology on choice and study selectively to pass the exam as the extensive course inhibited the examiners to assess every aspect of Pathology comprehensively especially Microbiology and general Pathology being compromised upon. As far as the teachers are concerned n=28 (88%) agreed that the course content is inappropriate and the students are being bombarded with selective knowledge in a shorter period of time. Important reservation of the faculty members was that they were not trained to deliver the content according to this sudden change which has seriously affected the student’s results. Conclusions: Although curriculum change is a dynamic process and leads to refinement of the existing content but it should be implemented after proper planning, training and validation so that the students and the teachers can cope with and derive maximum benefit.