Curriculum reform at the University of Otago Medical School

The University of Otago Medical School, the older of the two medical schools in New Zealand, identified during the 1980s many of the same problems with its undergraduate curriculum as were reported in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. An early, overly ambitious attempt to introduce a full problem-based learning curriculum at Otago failed; however, many piecemeal changes that embodied some of the principles of problem-based learning were successfully implemented. Subsequently, as desire for more coordinated and substantive change grew, Otago's faculty used what they had learned from their first effort to successfully introduce a modular systems-based preclinical curriculum in 1997. The authors describe the features of the new curriculum and discuss two components (a systems-integration course and a large-scale program of computerized in-course testing) that are particularly innovative. The new curriculum is already achieving one of its main goals (increasing the perceived relevance of preclinical teaching) and other outcomes are being evaluated.