What Kind of Curriculum Can Better Address Community Needs? Problems Arisen by Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning

The aim of this study was to identify problems arisen by conventional curricula, the guidelines for development of an appropriate educational model for 21st century, and the advantages and disadvantages of the last two curricular models. The medical education literature published from 1995 through 2002 of four reputable journals in medical education were searched (Academic Medicine, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, Medical Education, and Medical Teacher). First the possibly best articles were identified. During the second screening process 76 of 180 articles were found to be highly relevant to our questions. A review of the chosen articles revealed a concept map which starts from currently applied hypothetical-deductive reasoning (HDR)-based curricula in many medical schools all around the world. Results revelaed that continuing cyclical process might be time consuming, enhance burden of faculty and might be stressful for students involved. Current issues in health care system are possibly attributable to current HDR-based curricular models including PBL. Advantages of reiterative PBL theory can not be denied, but it appears that its limited application should be mainly seen in some academic classes to develop some generic transferable skills simultaneously with other teaching methods. Therefore vast application of HDR in clinical settings is not recommended according to our study. However the relationships demonstrated between factors and outcomes mentioned in the concept map can be used to run some new studies to test some hypotheses.