Managing curricular change in the UWI medical schools

The ideal operational curriculum is dynamic. It is alive, constantly responding to changes within the social milieu served by its programmes. The medical curriculum of the University of the West Indies (UWI) has not been readily responsive to its catchment society's changing needs. This lack of resilience has created both curricular and administrative problems that have remained unsolved. Now, at the threshold of the twenty-first century, many more fundamental curricular changes are imperative in the UWI medical programme if the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FMS) is to be able to withstand the territorial invasions imminent from the global digital institutions of the new age. The new changes that will place the medical curriculum in line with the demands of the new Information Age will also remove the obnoxious effects of the 'dual curriculum' question and related issues. The Change Formula (Ch = V x P x D > C) that has worked the corporate transformations and realignments of the late twentieth century is applied to the thoughts of a reformed management of the UWI medical curriculum, and its ability to break down walls of resistance to change and liberate the curriculum to full dynamism is discussed.