Don Urges Review Of Medical Education Curriculum

A Professor of Plastic Surgery and Applied Anatomy, Frank Akpuaka, has called for an urgent review of the   nation’s Medical Education Curriculum so as to tackle relentlessly   the numerous health challenges now facing the country and the entire planet.

Making the call recently, while presenting a lecture entitled “Challenges in Medical Education in the new Millennium”, to mark the 7th Emeritus Prof Chukwuedu Nwokolo lecture series and award of prizes for academic excellence, at the College of Medicine, University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), Prof. Akpuaka, submitted that throughout history, the medical community had sought to define the responsibilities of physicians and determine how best to educate them in these tasks.

According to him, health systems and medical education have reached a critical point where they must evolve in response to changes in political and economic conditions, epidemiological and sociological transitions and advances in science and technology.

Akpuaka, who is also the provost, College of Medicine, Anambra State University, Uli, noted that concerns about medical curriculum review have been raised world-wide. He said that the Association of Medical Colleges had over the past 60 years noted that most medical schools had done little or nothing to correct the major shortcomings in the way they educate their students, notwithstanding that these differences have been documented repeatedly.

As part of a robust attempt by stakeholders in the health sector and the academia globally to meet with challenges of health care, he said medical schools in Africa and many Asian countries currently offer what he referred to as “traditional teacher centred hospital based education systems”.

The renowned scholar however, admitted that medical practice and education in Nigeria are now facing such new challenges as aging population, changing disease patterns, change in patients’ expectations of physicians and the health system, advances in information and communication technologies, use of new diagnostic and therapeutic techniques and increased focus on alternative medicine and traditional medicine.

Earlier in his speech, the provost, College of Medicine, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Prof. Basden Onwubere, had explained that the Emeritus Prof Chukwuedu Nwokolo lecture series was one of the major activities adopted by the college administration to reward one of the founding fathers of the famous UNN College of Medicine, the first autonomous in the country.

Onwubere, noted with happiness that the lecture series, had today become a memorable event held every January, at which an academic giant is selected to deliver a lecture on a topical issue bothering on academic excellence, after which cash prizes of N50,000 and N25,000 are presented to the best academic staff and best student in the college.

He described Nwokolo, as a medical legend of the time, teacher, researcher and philanthropist.

Dr. Chibuike Chigbu and Hilary Odinaka won the awards at the   ceremony that attracted cream of the academia from within and outside the country.