Teaching and Learning Medical Biochemistry: Perspectives from a Student and an Educator

Advancement of medicine and that of biochemistry are inseparable, and much of modern medicine would not be practiced in the ways, as they are known today, without our understanding of how genetic, pathogenic and environmental factors affect the human body at the biochemical level. Thus, the importance of teaching medical students biochemistry is self-evident. Ironically, many medical students and practicing physicians consider learning biochemistry an unnecessary burden and that biochemistry has very little relevance to their daily practice of medicine [1–3]. Also, many students, especially those interested in fields such as primary care or psychiatry, also complain that there is too much anatomy in the preclinical curricula [1]. Thus, it seems that these students would prefer to selectively learn subject matters that they believe to be relevant to the medical specialties that they wish to acquire and practice in. Such utilitarian thinking, we believe, is in part responsible for the trend in medical curriculum that devaluates basic science and emphasizes apprenticeship experiences with clinical faculty [4]. Why do these medical students consider it unnecessary to learn biochemistry? What can educators do to convince them that learning biochemistry is important in their education? We have tried to answer these questions from the perspectives of M.A. (Mehdi Afshar), a fourth year medical student, and Z.H. (Zhiyong Han), a medical biochemistry educator. Based on our own experiences, we have considered and discussed four factors that we think partly explain why some medical students have unfavorable opinions about biochemistry (Table 1). We hope that our discussions could stimulate similar discussions among medical students and biochemistry educators elsewhere.