National Undergraduate Medical Core Curriculum in Turkey: Evaluation of Residents

A paradigm shift in educational priorities has occurred in medical teaching in recent years, as curricula have been developed at a national level in many countries (1-9). In Europe, Directive 2005/36/EC of the European Parliament declares that basic medical training shall comprise a total of at least six years of study or 5,500 hours of theoretical and practical training provided or supervised by a university (10). The American Association of Medical Colleges established the Medical Schools Objective Project (MSOP) whose goal was "to reach a consensus as to what skills medical students should possess at the time of graduation". According to MSOP, students should have the ability to perform routine technical procedures (11). Some medical schools in the United States have also implemented a number of key domains for the undergraduate medical curriculum (3). Canada, on the other hand, developed CanMEDS in 2005; this defines competencies based on the roles that a medical practitioner performs. Traditionally, medical education has focused competence around core medical expertise. (7). In Switzerland, the Joint Commission of the Swiss Medical Schools (SMIFK/CIMS) decided in 2000 to establish a national Catalogue of Learning Objectives for Undergraduate Medical Training (SCLO), which was adapted from the Dutch Blueprint and published in 2001 (12). In Turkey, the National Core Curriculum (NCC) was developed in 2001-2002 to identify standards for medical degrees, stating what a graduate is supposed to know, able to do, and competent in, within the context of local needs and realities. These standards have been developed under the guidance of academics from around the country (13). Included in the NCC was the recommendation that students have the ability to know diagnosis and treatment or only recognise the Illness-Condition-Symptom or perform routine technical procedures, including venipuncture, inserting a nasogastric tube, etc.