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A renewed MBChB curriculum which focuses on the disease burden and realities of South Africans could be on the cards for the faculty of medicine at Stellenbosch University, subject to accreditation by the Health Professions Council of South Africa.
At an interactive expo held in Tygerberg earlier this month, Professor Hennie Botha, a member of the curriculum renewal team said the MBChB curriculum needs to be socially accountable and tailored to the needs of South Africans.
"The motive for the renewal process is to design a curriculum that specifically addresses the disease burden and realities of the people of South Africa," said Botha.
"We want to enable our students to be change agents for better health and be clinicians that have the ability to continue learning and to maintain the curiosity of clinicians working in an ever-changing environment," Botha said.
The renewal process for the faculty’s MBChB programme started in 2017, and it is envisaged that the renewed curriculum will be rolled out in 2021 – subject to accreditation by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).
Health professionals' well-being
Part of the proposed curriculum will be changes to how medicine is taught: students will be exposed to primary healthcare environments early on in their programme.
An important component of the proposed programme is the well-being of the health professional.
"We want to equip the students with tools and skills to enable them to do self-care, and to develop resilience and robustness that can carry them through their medical careers," said Dr Kerrin Begg, a public health specialist, who leads the Being and Becoming in Healthcare module team.
Students who enrolled in the MBChB programme before 2021 will continue with the current curriculum for the duration of their studies and there will be an overlap of both the current and renewed MBChB programme from 2021 to 2025.
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