The Postgraduate General Medical Training in Taiwan: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

Purpose: Although the contents of the six-year undergraduate medical curriculum have been discussed, the details about how Postgraduate General Medical Training should be executed have not been finalized. Because the medical education reform in Taiwan may move towards six-year undergraduate curriculum plus two-year postgraduate general medical training, it is very important to borrow experiences from the United Kingdom and Japan, which both have six-year undergraduate curriculum and two-year postgraduate training before entering specialty and subspecialty training. Methods: A part-time interpreter was recruited for searching materials in relation to Basic Clinical Training written in Japanese. A research assistant was responsible for searching the web page of Foundation Program under the supervision of one of the investigators, and the search results were further examined and confirmed by the investigator. Both of them were given detail introductions regarding Japan's Basic Clinical Training and the United Kingdom's Foundation Program, as well as data collection sheets addressing the following issues: (1) history; (2) curriculum; (3) assessments. Results: The results of this present study provide a good opportunity for comparing the curriculums and assessments in Basic Clinical Training and Foundation Program with those in Taiwan's Postgraduate General Medical Training. Conclusion: By further deliberating Foundation Program and Basic Clinical Training, the followings are highly suggested for the future Postgraduate General Medical Training in Taiwan: (1) allowing more flexibility for trainees to determine the curriculum of Postgraduate General Medical Training; (2) the reliability and validity of assessment tools being evaluated for providing convincing assessment results both to trainees and raters.