Curriculum for the Bachelor of Medical Education (BEDM) Programme

Abstract

1.0 PREAMBLE Equipping Tutors of health professionals with adequate skills and knowledge in various disciplines including teaching has been widely recognised the world over. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) have highlighted the need for training health professionals with relevant competencies in various health disciplines because of the important role they play in improving the health of populations. More importantly, these world agencies have steered their member countries to focus on equipping trainers or Health Tutors with the appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for teaching health professionals. This is because performance of health professionals is to a large extent a function of how they were developed in training institutions. The Bachelor of Medical Education in Uganda, tenable at Uganda Health Tutors' College and awarded by Makerere University is to equip health tutors with competencies necessary for teaching, managing Health Training Institutions, providing primary health care services and participating in health professions' education and research. The Uganda Health Tutors' College is an affiliate to School of Education, Makerere University Kampala. The programme integrates education courses with health professional courses which are offered using competency-based training approach and other methodologies. The major thrust of the programme is to improve the quality of health of the community through acquisition of training and practice. The graduate health tutors trained through this programme will train middle level health professionals who will be able to provide safe and quality health care to individuals, families and various communities in the country. The programme will also prepare the graduate health tutor to function more competently as a member of the health care team. According to findings of a Training Needs Assessment (TNA) conducted by Dr. Joseph Oonyu (2006 & 2007), a number of middle level health training institutions have been offering diplomas in various health courses. However, most of the tutors in these institutions had only diploma qualifications in their various professions while the majority of them had no Educational training skills at all. Later the Allied Health Professionals were admitted and trained to teach in the Allied Health Schools. Arguably, the tutors needed the level of their professional and teaching qualifications to be upgraded to a level where the delivery of courses would be adequately covered. The Ministry of Education & Sports and the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders felt the need therefore to strengthen the qualifications of Health Tutors in order to improve quality training in middle level Health Training Institutions. The first level of this endeavour was to establish a road map of achieving this objective. In this regard the Bachelor of Health Tutors' Education curriculum has been designed to provide Health Tutors with appropriate and relevant competencies within the identified health education disciplines in order to facilitate quality training of Health Professionals in middle level Health Training Institutions in the country.