[Modifications to the faculty of medicine core curriculum at the National University of Mexico: adjusting the basic...

In order to identify the core curriculum of each course from the faculty of medicine’s study plan at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), 22 workshops were organized. A total of 505 professors of 22 different subjects participated to identify the core content of each course: to define essential and necessary contents; to relate each objective´s course with some of the eight established competences; and to apply an individual questionnaire where the professor suggests strategies for the vertical and horizontal integration among similar courses. At the end of these workshops, several meetings were carried out to incorporate the work done in order to design an integrated and modified program with the essential and necessary knowledge, eliminating the obsolete one. We also managed to integrate two courses in both horizontal and vertical ways to avoid repetition of topics.

Twenty-two courses were reviewed, from which two of them were horizontally and vertically integrated. The content of six courses was modified and one course was divided into three programs. This resulted in the achievement of our goal: to have an academic program with essential and necessary contents that integrates the essential core curriculum, which in turn leads to the achievement of the intermediate and final competences.