Currently, accreditation within medical education is a priority on the agenda for many countries worldwide. The World Federation for Medical Education’s (WFME) launch of its first trilogy of standards in 2003 was a seminal event in promoting accreditation within basic medical education (BME) globally. Parallel to that, WFME also actively spearheaded a project to recognize the accrediting agencies within individual countries. The introduction of competency-based medical education (CBME) with the two key concepts of “entrusted professional activity” and milestones has enabled researchers to identify the relationship between patient outcomes and medical education. Recent data driven by CBME has been used for the continuous quality improvement of trainees and training programmes as well. The goal of accreditation has shifted from the single purpose of quality assurance to balancing quality assurance and quality improvement. Even though there are a plethora of types of postgraduate medical education (PGME), it may be possible to accredit resident programmes on a global scale by adopting the concept of CBME. In addition, the alignment of the accreditation for BME and PGME, which center on competency, will be achievable. This argument may extend the possibility of measuring the outcomes of the accreditation itself against patient outcomes as well. Therefore, evidence of the advantages of costly and labor-consuming accreditation processes will be available in the near future and quality improvement will be the driving force of the accreditation process.

Needs for public healthcare have recently increased. This paper proposes education topics for competency development in public healthcare in line with the needs of the times. In Korea, various lifelong education providers have already provided public health-related education. For example, the Research Institute for Health Policy (RIHP) under the Korean Medical Association provided an “executive course for physicians’ public health care competencies” in 2019 and 2020. At the end of the course, the RIHP published a comprehensive report, entitled “Curricular development and evaluation for doctors’ public healthcare competencies.” This article is based on a summary of that report. To develop a curriculum for public healthcare, the RIHP adopted the following methodologies for a needs analysis; reviewing already-existing education subjects, evaluating end-of-course reports, and conducting in-depth focused group interviews and questionnaire surveys with doctors at public healthcare-related institutions. The results from the needs analysis can be categorized into two domains of education topics for public healthcare. The first domain includes education subjects related to the theory and practice of public healthcare, as follows: a general overview, community or population health, organizational administration, planning and evaluation, budget and finance, responses to disasters such as infectious diseases, health policy, and the legal system. The second domain contained education topics related to general professional competencies: leadership, communication, cooperation, teamwork, and professionalism. In conclusion, the curricular content for public healthcare will be an appropriate combination of competencies specific to public healthcare and core competencies for health professionals.

Currently, accreditation in medical education is a priority for many countries worldwide. The World Federation for Medical Education’s (WFME) launch of its 1st trilogy of standards in 2003 was a seminal event promoting accreditation in basic medical education (BME) globally. In parallel, the WFME also actively spearheaded a project to recognize accrediting agencies within individual countries. The introduction of competency-based medical education (CBME), with the 2 key concepts of entrusted professional activity and milestones, has enabled researchers to identify the relationships between patient outcomes and medical education. The recent data-driven approach to CBME has been used for ongoing quality improvement of trainees and training programs. The accreditation goal has shifted from the single purpose of quality assurance to balancing quality assurance and quality improvement. Although there are many types of postgraduate medical education (PGME), it may be possible to accredit resident programs on a global scale by adopting the concept of CBME. It will also be possible to achieve accreditation alignment for BME and PGME, which center on competency. This approach may also make it possible to measure accreditation outcomes against patient outcomes. Therefore, evidence of the advantages of costly and labor-consuming accreditation processes will be available soon, and quality improvement will be the driving force of the accreditation process.

PURPOSE: We investigated the relationship between cognitive and learning style by comparing the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) with the Index of Learning Styles (ILS). We assessed whether cognitive styles correlated with learning styles with regard to their corresponding dimensions. METHODS: One hundred two second-year premedical students participated, and data from ninety-four students were analyzed. One student's data file was lost during data collection, and six students were excluded because their correct response rates on the CSA were lower than 50%. Both scales were presented on a computer item by item, and the assessment was conducted in the computer lab as a group. For analysis, responses and reaction times were recorded. RESULTS: Distributions of the styles were generated. We correlated the verbal-imagery dimension of the CSA with the visual-verbal dimension of the ILS and found no correlation. There was no correlation between the wholist-analytic dimension of the CSA with the sequential-global dimension of the ILS. Excluding intermediate students in the verbal-imagery dimension of the CSA, however, there appeared to be a marginally significant correlation between the verbal-imagery dimension of the CSA and the visual-verbal dimension of the ILS. CONCLUSION: In the visual (imagery)-verbal dimension, there was some correlation between cognitive and learning styles.
Information Storage and Retrieval ; Cognition ; Data Collection ; Humans ; Learning ; Pyridines ; Reaction Time ; Students, Premedical ; Thiazoles ; Weights and Measures

Republic of Korea has experienced rapid economic growth over the last several decades. During this period, some medical schools have been founded with inadequate educational resources. Currently, the Korean medical faculties are frustrated due to the sense of inability to improve the quality of education provided by troubled medical schools. In fact, this phenomenon is a consequence of the reckless establishment of new medical schools. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education, which claims to reserve the right to grant permission to establish new medical schools, cannot manage this situation either. The Ministry is very reluctant to endorse disciplinary measures based on the standards set by the accreditation agency; instead, it insists on using the court system. In East Asia, there is no history of self-regulation, and very often, the power of the government far exceeds that of professional organizations. This can create tension between an accreditation agency and the government. Even though the Korean Ministry of Education has created a new system recognizing the authority of the accreditation agency, it has not taken into account the specialized aspects of medical education. The government has also stated that only the law can mediate the regulation of low-quality education, so the standards set by the accrediting agency are not legally binding. Despite the good quality-control system that has been put in place for the last 13 years by the Korean Institute of Medical Education and Evaluation the Ministry wants to have authority over any corrective measures. Republic of Korea may have achieved democracy at the macro-level, but this is a time when democracy should be implemented with regard to a specific constituency and an important issue.
Accreditation* ; Democracy ; Economic Development ; Education ; Education, Medical* ; Faculty, Medical ; Far East ; Financing, Organized ; Humans ; Jurisprudence ; Republic of Korea* ; Schools, Medical ; Societies

It is not well known in Korea if the entrance examination score has any predictive validity on the graduation score and national licensure examination. In addition, the gender effects of the three scores were investigated. The study was conducted using two years data of the three scores. The three scores from students of class of 98 and 99 were collected. Students who could not complete the medical education in four years were excluded. Also students who could not pass the national licensure examination were excluded as well. Correlations among the three scores were calculated and gender effect was examined by t- test. For the statistical process, SPSS 9.0 was used. The correlation between the scores of the entrance examination and graduation examination is not significant at 5% level. The correlation between the scores of the entrance examination and national licensure examination is not significant at 5% level. The correlation between graduation examination and national licensure examination;0.635 is highly significant at 0.1% level. The score difference between male and female at the entrance examination was not significant at 5% level. The score difference between male and female at the graduation examination and national licensure examination was highly significant at 0.1% level.
Education, Medical ; Female ; Humans ; Korea* ; Licensure* ; Male ; Statistics as Topic*

Practicing medicine is a social activity. Because doctor-patient interaction requires respect, leadership, and interpersonal skills that extend beyond medical diagnosis and treatment, medical education must incorporate non-clinical competencies. While qualities such as lifelong learning skills, resource management, teamwork skills, and active involvement in leadership and bettering the healthcare system have received little attention in medical academia, these competencies have proven vital for a physician in contemporary society. These non-clinical competencies are, in fact, the traits or components of social competency. Social competency has been an area of interest, particularly with regard to the development of children and adolescents, in the fields of education, psychology, and less commonly, economics. However, traditional Korean residency programs have not paid much attention to social competency due to their closed culture originating from the colonial period. Resident education is still heavily dependent on a patriarchal system based on "family" values. Resident education is concentrated in medical knowledge and skills within specialty departments functioning as a family-like unit. Specialty training has a very narrow, constrained vision without incorporating much education on the social dimension of medical practice. Nevertheless, developing a social competency scheme for resident education was initiated in 2008, when the Korean Medical Association celebrated the centennial of producing licensed physicians. However, the scheme is still under development and not widely used. Korean medical educators must, therefore, recognize the value of social competencies and include them as graduation outcomes of residency training to prepare doctors to meet the challenges of the future.
Adolescent ; Child ; Delivery of Health Care ; Diagnosis ; Education ; Education, Medical ; Humans ; Internship and Residency ; Leadership ; Learning ; Psychology

No abstract available.

No abstract available.
Licensure*

The abolishment of the internship training program in Korea has become a hot issue in Korea. The internship has traditionally been a general competency build-up process to becoming a practicing doctor. However, despite its relatively long history, there is still no oversight or guidelines for the educational program itself. It is operated individually department-by-department on a rotation basis with no central supervision or clear goals and objectives. Very often, interns are abused as sources of simple cheap labor, performing not only medical duties but also menial administrative tasks as required by each department, without proper educational activity or training. This significant lack of system and structure is a chronic grievance among those who experience it, yet perhaps due to its short duration, is something that is endured and then forgotten. Medical students, however, have largely opposed the abolition, citing the loss of the opportunity for anthropologic exploration of various clinical departments and the chance to build networks to pursue specialty training in the fields of their choice. The key issue at hand is then whether the current problematic student clerkship training can be improved enough to replace the internship program. To do so would require overcoming the fragmented nature of the clinical education culture, which is still quite clannish in nature and based on family values. Whether these cultural barriers can be broken to develop a clerkship training curriculum sufficient to achieve general competency before specialty training is the determining factor for the fate of the internship program.
Curriculum ; Hand ; Humans ; Internship and Residency ; Korea ; Organization and Administration ; Republic of Korea ; Students, Medical