Need fatigued for superior medical education

Health education institutes should ensure that quality health education and practical training is imparted to 10,000 students who are enrolled at medical colleges and varsities every year in Pakistan to cope with growing challenges in the healthcare sector.This was stated by Prof. Syed Sibtul Hasnain, President Pakistan Medical and Dental Council while speaking at inaugural ceremony of two-day conference on Building Bridges for Medical Education Reforms, which started here Saturday.

The conference has been organised by the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), at its Ojha campus, Karachi and is being attended by over 60 principals and Deans from all over the country.The conference is aimed at bringing Principals and medical education faculty of all medical colleges of the country, of both public and private sectors on one platform, enabling them to share their work, policies and challenges and to benefit from the experiences of PMDC and HEC officials.PMDC President said it was the responsibility of the faculty and officials of statuary bodies to ensure the best possible teaching and training to the students to enable them to cope with the challenges in the healthcare sector in the country.

He said every year, over 10,000 students were enrolled at health educational institutions throughout Pakistan, who have to provide medical facilities to more than 200 million people in the country as well as study abroad.PMDC and managements of health educational institutes are all striving to improve curricula but we should also make collective efforts to improve undergraduate medical education that is why the theme of this conference is building brides for medical education reforms he added.There would be a panel discussion at the last session of the conference and its recommendations will be submitted to PDMC to help improving and upgrading the curricula of educational institutes offering health education, he said.The Vice-Chancellor of the DUHS, Prof. Masood Hameed Khan, sharing his views informed, said, Our vision is to foster a foundation of exemplary academic achievement and provide and environment that encourages active learning through state of art technology he added.He maintained that vision and mission of DUHS was focused on three domains that included academic excellence, human resource development, and community healthcare.

We have established several institutes that give technical and technological training and also those that are providing expensive healthcare services at minimal rates, he added.Prof. Salahuddin Afsar, Dean Faculty of Medicine of DUHS, in his welcome address said that medical education was undergoing rapid changes throughout the world and there was need to adopt a holistic approach towards it in the country too.He maintained that the envisaged that the conference will be focused on providing a platform for sharing the experiences of under-graduate medical curricular reforms.

Dr Syed Moyn Ali, Director Medical Education, Taif University; Prof. Rukhsana Zuberi, Professor of Family Medicine Associate Dean, Education Chair, Department of Educational Development, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aga Khan University; Prof. Rashid Ahmed, Chair of Curriculum Com-AKU; Prof. Kamran Hamed, Dean-Ziauddin University and Prof Tara Jaffery, Associate Professor of Medicine, Shifa International also spoke on the occasion.