A Proposed Undergraduate Cardiology Curriculum using Active Teaching Model at Cairo University Hospitals (An Active Teaching Cardiology Curriculum)

Introduction: This project is a course intended to be an introduction to basic clinical cardiology for final year undergraduate medical students. The course is already ongoing, yet it is being delivered in a lecture format that is limited by the inherited low retention rate characteristic to this teaching model. Aim: This project aims at transforming the lecture based curriculum into a more modern, interactive, learner driven teaching model. Patients and Methods: The course content will be delivered at Cairo university hospitals and will be divided into three main parts, each will be delivered in five sessions. Basic clinical skills including blood pressure measurement and local cardiac examination of valvular heart disease patients will utilize the Peyton’s model for procedural teaching, ECG interpretation will utilize the flipped classroom model and finally common cardiac emergencies, for which we will utilize a case-based collaborative learning method. A verbal approval has been obtained from the department head and we will start recruiting the team of trainers who will be responsible for implementing this course. We will need to set one or two training sessions for the attending staff to orient them on why and how we are modifying the current teaching method. I foresee some resistance from some of the team members who are familiar with the current methods of teaching and believe it is effective and need not be changed, but I believe the planned orientation sessions can help break the ice and highlight the importance of modern teaching methods. Another important limitation is the number of students, we currently receive around 150 students per rotation which is a number that would require large number of staff members particularly for small group teaching sessions, this limitation would require planning at the faculty administration level targeting reduction of the number of students per rotation. Finally, this project is intended to follow a stepwise approach, starting off with the ECG part to test its feasibility.