Curriculum review in medical education: A case study

The case study reported here examined curriculum planning as perceived by faculty members on the Curriculum Review Steering Committee in the school of medicine of a large public state university. The author adopted a single case study approach collecting data from observations of curriculum committee meetings, a review of planning documents, and interviews with medical school faculty members.;The following four research questions were used to identify those elements of the undergraduate medical curriculum review process accommodative to Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) principles: (1) How are the educational mission, goals and objectives developed to meet the needs of the stakeholders? (2) How broad is the collaboration in the curriculum revision process, and what are the roles of the participants? (3) What processes appear to be critical to improving medical education? (4) How do curriculum committee members assess the value of their curriculum revisions?;The following four findings emerged from this study of the curriculum review process: (1) The consensus on the purpose of the review was a response to state and federal mandates to increase the number of generalist physicians. Meanwhile, the impact of other critical health-care initiatives were not acknowledged. (2) The participants in the curriculum review process included only senior medical faculty members. The committee failed to adequately assess the changing health-care needs of the public by soliciting information from sources outside the academic medical center. (3) In spite of acknowledged inadequacies in previous curriculum reviews, the review committee members nonetheless, declined to apply formal organizational planning models to facilitate the curriculum review and curriculum management remained basically unchanged. (4) The medical faculty viewed the outcomes of the curriculum review as favorable but remained uncertain about formal mechanisms for assessing the revised medical education program. This curriculum review process did not incorporate the principles of continuous quality improvement.;The findings reported here are preliminary and narrow in scope and further research is recommended in alternative settings to assess the relevance of continuous quality improvement models for curriculum planning in medical education.