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Shahid Motahhari Medical Education Festival: A Step towards Medical Students’ Involvement in Medical Education
Hossein Mazouchian Medical students are the first target of the medical education system. Therefore, they should rightfully have the opportunity to be involved in the process of designing their own medical curricula.
Hossein is a fourth-year medical student and Local Officer on Medical Education for the Tabriz Local Committee of IFMSA-Iran.
To date, the key role of medical students in medical education decision-making has unfortunately largely been neglected. This shortcoming may be due to an existing general apathy amongst medical students. Another explanation could be that they underestimate how much they can potentially contribute, especially with respect to curriculum design and development. To help combat this problem, SCOME members of IFMSA-Iran-Tabriz organised a medical education festival through the Education and Development Centre (EDC) of the Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. The festival was titled the “Shahid Motahhari Medical Education Festival” and was very warmly received by the student body. One of the programs in the festival involved holding a contest to hear medical students’ thoughts on various issues existing in different areas of medical education. The contest aimed to inspire students into being more active in medical education-related issues. Possible solutions, as well as strategies by which to carry out the solutions, were put forward. Due to the great number of interested participants the deadline for submitting applications to the contest was twice postponed.
In the end, forty main concepts were collected from the contestants. They were categorized into several themes (creativity in medical education; curricula design and development; medical assessment tools; medical students’ role in medical education; and educational products) and judged upon by qualified referees. At the end of the judging process, fourteen ideas were selected as focal points for future efforts in medical education. Since medical students are the first checkpoint of the medical education system, they should be actively involved in the decision-making process, and should be able to influence curriculum design and development. By carrying out a variety of programs in the Shahid Motahhari Medical Education Festival, we believe we have created an environment conducive to motivating medical students to take part in building their own medical education systems!
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