Medical Education - Press Release by Health Action International
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Health care has been evolving through out the evolution of hu-
manity. The practice of medicine however has undergone drastic
changes during the past three or four decades with a plethora of
new inventions and ideas that have resulted in it being very dy-
namic and interactive. On the contrary the medical education,
which had followed the evolution of medicine in the early
stages, has changed very little over the past three or four dec-
ades, comparing to the enormous changes in the medical practice.
The objective of medical education is to train young persons and
equip them with the necessary knowledge and skills to respond to
the health needs of the people and to assist these people and
the state to achieve their health objectives. In today's con-
tinually changing health care environment, there is serious con-
cern that medical students are not being adequately prepared to
provide optimal health care in the system where they will even-
tually practice.
The following are some of the shortfalls and reasons identified
in the existing medical curricula in many developing countries'
medical schools:
* Lack of communication between health authorities and the medi-
cal schools
* No feed back given to medical schools regarding skills, knowl-
edge, attitudes and competencies;
* No balance between curative and preventive medicine and Cura-
tive based training makes students believe that drugs are power-
ful weapons;
* Predominance of departmental, subject oriented curriculum
linked to high technology medicine;
* Primary Health Care (PHC) considered as the most important
pathway to achieve Health For All (HFA) is poorly reflected in
the medical curricula; Low priority of community health;
* Medical ethics, Equity and Human rights have little place in
the training;
* Teacher dependent learning process and communication between
teachers and students strictly one-way;
* The social, economic and cultural dimensions of ill health are
not addressed properly.
If attitudes, behaviour, responsibility and interpersonal skills
play a pivotal role in making a desirable doctor the selection
criteria should not be solely on the aggregate marks or points.
Access to medical education is not evenly distributed among
various geographical and social groups in many counties. There
should be ways and means to recruit medical students and other
health workers from the range of backgrounds that makes up any
society.
Training the medical students into rational health care provid-
ers and rational prescribers is said to be the biggest challenge
for any undergraduate medical education system. Irrational pre-
scribing is widely reported in many teaching hospitals, while
clinical teaching of undergraduate students is often insuffi-
ciently planned and supervised. This position paper deals with
undergraduate medical education that should strengthen and
sharpen the skills of the medical undergraduates to be tomor-
rows' care providers, decision makers, communicators, community
leaders and team members.
Based on the analysis of the evidence presented this paper,
while recommending many general changes to take place in the
curriculum, particularly emphasizes that the following areas
pertaining to rational health care should be sufficiently empha-
sized in medical training:
* The need for formulating and implementing a National Drug Pol-
icy as an integral component of the overall National Health Pol-
icy and the concept of essential drugs and their rational use to
be included in the National Drug Policy;
* The need for a more equitable allocation of the limited health
care resources available in a country to enable a shift from
hospital based, high technology curative medicine to community
based primary health care;
* The ability of the graduates to critically evaluate the promo-
tional material put forward by the private pharmaceutical indus-
try;
* The criteria necessary for weeding ineffective, irrational,
needlessly expensive and harmful drugs and dosage formations
from the market;
* The need for objective continuing medical education of practi-
tioners;
* The need to communicate effectively to patients in a language
they can easily understand to ensure that they become active
members of the health care team
For further information contact:
Information & Communications Officer
Health Action International Asia Pacific
mailto:passanna@haiap.org