CURRICULUM STRATEGY

 
The CMHS follows a problem-based, student-centered and community-based curriculum. The problem-based learning integrates basic medical sciences with related professional skills training, and community health activities. The curriculum is of six years duration consisting of three phases: Phase I (year 1), where teaching comprises foundation courses to prepare students for studying medicine; Phase II or pre-clerkship phase (3 years) is a unit-system-based program with problem-based learning as the main strategy of instruction, and Phase III or clerkship phase (2 years) where teaching is in the form of clinical rotations in hospitals and primary health care centers in Bahrain.

Curriculum Organization

At the macro level, CMHS curriculum organization is characterized by the following:

Horizontal organization

In phase II, there is horizontal integration between basic and clinical sciences in the context of medical problems. Along with that, there is also horizontal integration of professional clinical skills and community health activities. In phase III, the organization of the different clinical rotations again takes the form of horizontal correlation.

Horizontal organization

There are two types of vertical organization in CMHS curriculum: a) Pre-requisites: For students to enter the phase II, they are required to study foundation courses in different subjects in phase I. In addition, studying integrated basic and clinical sciences and achieving satisfactory performance in these sciences is a pre-requisite to enter the clerkship phase. b) Sequencing: Clinical skills are taught on models and simulated patients in phase II followed by training on real patients in phase III.