Investigating the Impact of Horizontal Integration in the Education of Basic General Medical Sciences: A Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract

Background: The revised program of general medical education was implemented from 2018 based on horizontal integration and device-oriented presentation, especially in the topics of physiology and anatomical sciences. The present study aims to investigate the effect of horizontal integration in the teaching of basic science courses in general medicine. Methods: In this combined study, we compared students' performance in general medical basic science courses before and after the 2022 revision at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. In the quantitative stage, the study included 224 participants using the census method to extract their personal information and indicators related to academic progress. In the qualitative phase, semi-structured interviews with the teachers of this program were conducted until the information was saturated and analyzed with the conventional content analysis method. Findings: The average grade point average of the basic science course, the number of conditional semesters, and the number of failed courses of students in different entrances had no statistically significant difference with each other (P > 0.05), but the average grade point average of anatomical sciences was higher after integration (P < 0.001). In the qualitative part of the total interviews, 249 codes were extracted from 2 main floors of university policies and upstream policies and 6 sub-floors including educational planning, faculty members, and students in each main floor. Conclusion: Except for the increase in anatomical sciences score after the revision, there was no significant difference in other indicators of academic progress. This can be attributed to the entry of more students with weaker ranks in the entrance exam, also to the short time interval between the intervention and the evaluation of the results. © 2024 Isfahan University of Medical Sciences(IUMS). All rights reserved.