Challenges in shifting to an integrated curriculum in a Caribbean medical school.

Abstract

Xavier University School of Medicine (XUSOM) is an offshore Caribbean medical school in Aruba, Kingdom of the Netherlands admitting students from the United States, Canada and other countries to the undergraduate medical (MD) course. Like most other offshore Caribbean medical schools, XUSOM was initially following a discipline based curriculum but shifted to an integrated curriculum from January 2013. Initially the school was following a partially integrated curriculum with the normal human subjects of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry being covered during the first two semesters and the abnormal human subjects of pathology, microbiology, pharmacology and introduction to clinical medicine being covered during semesters 3 and 4. From January 2014 the school has shifted to a fully integrated curriculum with all the basic science subjects being covered in an integrated organ system based manner [1]. Table 1 shows the different systems being learned by students during different semesters. At XUSOM like in most other offshore Caribbean medical schools a semester of study is of 15 weeks duration and there are three student intakes a year in January, May and September [2]. In this article I will briefly discuss challenges faced in shifting to a fully integrated curriculum and how we have tried to address them.