IAMSE Fall 2017 WAS Session 4 Highlights

In case you missed yesterday’s Webcast Audio Seminar (WAS) Session, here are the highlights of this session:

Challenges and Opportunities for Medical Schools in Africa
Presenter: Quentin Eichbaum, MD, PhD, MPH, MFA
September 28, 12 PM EST

  • Africa is large and complex that includes wide spectrum of geographies, economies and cultural difference, including over 1000 different languages and dialects.
  • No One Size Fits All
  • Global health is central in Africa and what they have constructed.
  • Competency-based education model or backwards design.
  • Three key concepts: Context Global- local; Interdependence in Education; Transformative learning.
  • Medical Education Partnership Imitative (MEPI) is no longer replaced with AFREhealth in conjugation with Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH).

Challenges facing New Medical Schools in Africa

  • Standards/accreditation
  • Admissions
  • Assessment and evaluation
  • Curriculum

The Problems

  • Insufficiently inclusive of input from LMICs.
  • Insufficiently context specific
  • Unresolved “individualist/collectivists disjunction
  • Inadequate assessment methods

Conclusions

  • Africa – a large place with complex cultures, policy legacies (colonialist & other)
  • Medical education in Africa spans a wide range of resources and modalities in pedagogy, standards/accreditation, curricula, admissions, assessment and evaluation
  • Key concepts in global education – contexts, interdependence – Consortia, alliances, networks–MEPI, Consortium of New Southern African Medical Schools (CONSAMS), AFREhealth, CUGH – Role of “global health” in driving change global education, research – Risks of exporting ‘Western’ education into local African contexts
  • Problem with competencies in African ‘collectivist’ settings
  • Ethics of research; capacitation; science vs humanities

For more information on the next session or to register, please click here.