Using Core Principles in Physiology and Pathology to Guide Spiraled Biomedical Curriculum Development

Abstract

Determining the content and order of instruction can be challenging when developing an integrated medical physiology curriculum. It is easy to fall into the trap to teach everything when selecting content required for the first two year curriculum. There is a real need to develop tools that allow for the critical integration of content and flow among faculty. One integration method is developing a set of “core principals” (top‐down guiding principles) for each course. The crucial step is for faculty to develop and agree upon the essential guiding principles that are the “core principals”. While no top‐down central guiding theme can be considered most appropriate for all situations one benefit of pre‐identifying core principles is that it helps faculty self‐regulate with respect to what students are learning. Internally asking the question, “Why am I having the students learn this?” forces faculty members working on curricular development to see the forest through the trees. Using “core principal” themes provides the following: prioritizes content selection, defines flow of content, allows for planning in a spiral curriculum, promotes self‐correction when selecting content and most importantly, provides conceptual scaffolding for students. Specifically, themes guide student instruction in the classroom and answer the classic question “Why do I need to know this?”. An example from renal physiology during the first year of medical school, would be the use of water, ionic and glucose homeostasis as core principles to guide the integration of content development for the renal system. This becomes useful during the second year when students are dealing with concepts related to the use of diuretics in clinical medicine. Using “core principals” provides tools for creating an effective integrated classroom environment. Lastly, the self‐directed student learner can also use the provided “core principles” to refine their mental models as they learn new material.