Designing health professions curriculum for a changing world

As health systems respond to increasingly complex patient needs, new technologies, and accelerating therapeutic innovations, health professions education must also evolve to prepare practitioners for rapidly changing practice environments.

Recognizing these systemic shifts, the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy recently undertook a full curriculum renewal of the professional Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program, restructuring from a four-year to a three-year curriculum organized around integrated blocks. The first three-year PharmD program to launch in Canada, early student engagement in the curriculum design ensured the program reflected learner needs and experiences.

“Curriculum renewal in health professions is really top of mind right now because the health care landscape is changing so quickly,” said Naomi Steenhof, assistant professor, teaching stream. “It was a key priority for our renewal team to involve current students in curriculum design and decision-making before implementation, and we learned that this is both feasible and valuable.”

Using orientation materials and facilitated focus groups, the team captured student insights on draft curricular blocks, which yielded actionable improvements and a foundation for program evaluation. The team recently published their approach to student engagement in Medical Teacher, the official journal of the International  Association for Health Professions Education (AMEE), reaching a broad global community of educators across health professions.

“A strength of our approach, and what we hope makes it usable in other contexts and countries, is the low-cost and minimal resources required,” said Steenhof. “We really focused this publication on offering a scalable template that can be relevant for any health professions education school around the globe, so others can pick up elements, and be able to apply them to their medical or nursing school and consider how the outcomes we shared might help shape their approach.”