Rita Sood Coauthors Article on Curricular Reform

Rita Sood, M.B.B.S., M.D., M.M.Ed.
Professor of Medicine
All India Institute of Medical Sciences
New Delhi, India

Congratulations to FAIMER faculty member Rita Sood (PHIL 2005) on the publication of the following article, coauthored by N. Ananthakrishnan:

Sood R, Ananthakrishnan N. Reforming medical curriculum in India in recent years: Conflicts of political, regulator, educationist and professional natures and strategies for their resolution. International Journal of User-Driven Healthcare. 2012;2(1):1-13.

The article identifies four attempts made over the past two decades to reform the undergraduate and postgraduate medical curricula in India; three aimed at redesigning the undergraduate curriculum and one aimed at improving the postgraduate curriculum. The authors, both of whom were involved in these reform efforts, explain that although curricular innovations have been initiated and institutionalized at many individual medical schools in India in recent years, attempts to date to bring about change at a national level have not been successful. They explore the conflicts encountered between political, educationist, professional, and regulatory stakeholders; and the ways in which curricular reform efforts are often reduced to battles between competing powerful entities, with little involvement of the true stakeholders, the medical students and the populace at large. The article was posted on FAIMER’s Facebook page on June 18.