Seven Iraqi medical schools (Baghdad, Hawler, Karbala, Kufa, Mustansiriya, Thi-Qar and Wasit) met in Erbil this week to discuss medical undergraduate education and how it could be developed to help recently qualified medical graduates deliver safe and effective care for patients.
The meeting followed on from an MOU being signed jointly by the University of Baghdad College of Medicine and the British Council, which focuses on helping enhance medical education throughout Iraq. The Workshop built on this and developed further the outcomes of previous medical education workshops in Iraq, which had also been led by Professor Nigel Bax and Professor Deborah Bax from the University of Sheffield. The British Council will be continuing to work with Nigel and Deborah Bax and the University of Sheffield helping those delivering medical education, and the students who are learning medicine, in all Iraqi medical colleges with the support, guidance and leadership of the Baghdad College of Medicine.
The workshop covered areas such as the need to provide information to pupils at high schools who are considering reading medicine to help them make the correct career decisions, the selection process for such applicants, their support once in medical college and how students who experience difficulty at medical college are identified and helped. The need to develop students’ ability to learn independently rather than just be taught was emphasised and discussed in relation to the existing and future possible structures of the medical curricula.
The nature and quality of teaching, the amount of learning that students are required to undertake and the need for them to have greater clinical experience as well as competence in a range of clinical practical procedures was also debated at length, as was how to determine who is fit to practise as a doctor. Such considerations included a student having adequate knowledge but not being overloaded, being clinically competent and sufficiently experienced, able to undertake all the practical procedures required of them and demonstrating appropriate professional behaviours. It was recognised that faculty need support to both develop their own careers and provide high levels of academic service and the value of regular appraisals to aid this was discussed. In addition, it was recognised that the same approach would be of value to medical students.
The workshop was characterised by vigorous, well-informed, open and honest discussions which resulted in a very high degree of consensus. It was agreed that there was an overwhelming need for colleges to continue their collaboration and to widen it to all medical colleges in Iraq.