Medical Education

SCOME, the Standing Committee on Medical Education, is one of the six Standing Committees of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) and IFMSA - Egypt.

SCOME is a discussion forum for students interested in the different aspects of medical education in the hope of pursuing and achieving its aim. Medical Education in Egypt, SCOME was first officially introduced during the 2002-2003 term. Since then dozens of initiatives, projects and activities were launched and carried out.

Should be a concern of every medical student as it shapes not only the quality of future doctors, but also the quality of healthcare.

Former IFMSA-Egypt NOMEs:

- Amr El Seefy (2002-2003)

- Mohammad El Bahrawy (2003-2004)

- Ahmad Abd El Hamid (2004-2005)

- Ahmad El Zeki (2005-2007)

- Fat’hi Mostafa (2007-2008)

SCOME-Director EMR Regional Assistant 08-09:

- Fat’hi Mostafa

IFMSA-SCOME Director 1986-1987:

- Mohammad Saleh Mostafa Hassan

Mission:

Our mission is to build awareness on topics needed for changing the Medical Education for the better.

Activities:

SCOME is the committee concerned with the Education part of the Medical Education process; we work on topics like Curriculum, Teaching, Learning, Assessment, Research and much more…

Healthcare is changing at an unprecedented rate and at multiple fronts. Technology has revolutionized archaic diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Medical science has increased our understanding of the body and created an explosion of new information. Patients are increasingly questioning and less trusting their doctors. However, medical schools are either not or only slowly introducing changes in their curriculum. Teachers at many medical faculties are not equipped to teach, they are doctors, and mostly lack knowledge of how to pass their skills to their students.

We question that students educated in a so-called traditional curriculum are able to face the needs of healthcare in a modern society. Scientific data show that modern medical curricula are a lot more likely to teach students in an appropriate way in order to create doctors equipped with various skills and knowledge. Although there are a number of innovative approaches to teaching medicine, partly based on findings of cognitive science, change in medical curricula occurs slowly and at few medical schools. The need for change is either not recognized or ignored by many universities.

As medical students are directly exposed to medical curricula, they should rightfully be assumed to be experts on their educational system, and should therefore have an influence on the creation of new curricula. From IFMSA’s experience, it is often the medical students who are the strongest proponents for adapting their education to the needs of their community.

Here is where SCOME comes into the picture; we try to promote modern medical education. Convinced by many positive examples we carry out our mission by teaching and training students, teachers, and professors, exchanging experiences and spreading information.

The Theme for IFMSA-Egypt's SCOME activities this year is

“Medical Education, towards more involvement and more professionalism”

Projects:

- Students & Research

- Influence of Studying in Students' Health (ISSH)

- SCOME National Awareness Campaign (NAC)

- Wrong Medical Believes (WMB)

- Continuous Medical Education (CME)

- Teaching Methodologies in Lectures (TeMeLe)

- Medical Education Summer School

Students& Research:

The project is built on the idea of training medical students on the basics of scientific research and giving them the opportunity for application of their gained knowledge in real researches in specialized institutes, all under supervision of research trainers and doctors.

The 1st round of our initiative has successfully ended and last year’s program participants have received certificates from the ASMR and National Research Centre during the student’s session in the 2nd ASMR International Conference in the National Research Centre.

Influence of Studying in Students' Health (ISSH):

ISSH is an international project that aims to determine the level of deterioration of health among medical and non-medical students and to develop programs to reduce or even prevent it. This health deterioration mainly revolves around stress-related factors.

SCOME National Awareness Campaign (NAC):

NAC is an awareness campaign on Medical Education topics, carried out on a yearly basis.

Wrong Medical Believes (WMB):

parade

WMB aims to detect the wrong medical believes and practices within both public and among the medical communities and to try to solve and find out ways to deal with it from SCOPH and SCOME points of view.

Continuous Medical Education (CME):

Built on the idea of awareness of undergraduates about the CME system applied worldwide. We are working on finding the possible official channels for putting a concrete system for CME in Egypt.

Teaching Methodologies in Lectures (TeMeLe):

TeMeLe revolves around the evaluation of the teaching methods and hopefully it will further develop to include the whole medical education system evaluation within Egypt.