NUS Common Curriculum for Health Professional Education

NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine enhances the integrated Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) programme with an interdisciplinary common curriculum.

Since August 2023, the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, in collaboration with the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Faculty of Dentistry, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, and the Department of Pharmacy, has rolled out a new interdisciplinary common curriculum. This new NUS Common Curriculum for Healthcare Professional Education has been carefully crafted to ensure that the learning outcomes are aligned with the future vision of healthcare with focus on preventive healthcare and facilitating ageing in place through the use of technology and analytics.

First-year students from NUS Medicine will join first-year students from Dentistry, Pharmacy and Nursing to take five specially designed courses together, and they will collaborate across the four healthcare disciplines as part of their learning journey. The NUS Common Curriculum, which is to be completed in the first two years of their candidature, will complement the existing MBBS programme. Students must complete and pass all 5 Common Curriculum courses, in order to be eligible for graduation. 

This cross-disciplinary curriculum seeks to cultivate awareness of social issues, teamwork, communication, ethics and professionalism, digital literacy, and interprofessional education in the context of health and healthcare. In addition, the NUS Common Curriculum aims to equip the students with collaborative skills to engage in population healthcare planning, delivery and evaluation. Lessons are conducted through blended learning with a mix of online and in-person classes, which will be customised to feature groups as well as individual learning sessions such as case-based discussions, fireside chats and self-reflections.

Students will also engage in interdisciplinary experiential learning through the Longitudinal Patient Experience, where teams of students from various healthcare disciplines will visit patients in their homes and living environment continually for one year. This immersive learning journey provides students with opportunities to apply the concepts learnt in class to provide holistic care for their patients, and at the same time fosters empathy and resilience in the students.

“Health and well-being are more than just caring for the sick. To help people stay healthy as long as they live, and better care for them when they are ill, we need to look beyond the traditional confines of medicine and science, and draw upon other disciplines. Health sciences education should prepare tomorrow’s doctors, nurses, dentists and pharmacists to harness the power of artificial intelligence, computing, business analytics, even music and the arts, in the provision of holistic, patient-centric healthcare,” said Professor Chong Yap Seng, Dean of NUS Medicine.

Please refer to Annexe for more information about the Common Curriculum.

Annex: NUS Common Curriculum for Healthcare Professional Education

In line with the emphasis on patient-centric and relationship-based healthcare in Singapore, NUS undergraduate students studying Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy will be able to gain deeper and broader knowledge and understanding of healthcare issues and challenges through the new cross-disciplinary NUS Common Curriculum.

The new NUS Common Curriculum for Healthcare Professional Education will apply social and behavioural determinants of health to social prescribing and planetary health; use data and digital literacy to enable population healthcare planning, delivery and evaluation; and strengthen interdisciplinary engagement as well as experiential learning.

The NUS Common Curriculum comprises of the following courses:

1. SPH1901C: Socio-Ecological Determinants of Health (Year 1)

The health of individuals and populations are seldom driven by biomedical and health care factors alone. The course on Socio-ecological Determinants of Health examines the role of social, environmental and other factors on health and well-being.

It will also provide guiding principles, frameworks, and approaches for health promotion and disease prevention. This course will equip students with the foundation to provide person-centered holistic care.

2. MD1902C: Professional Practice 1: The Foundations of Health Professionalism (Year 1)

This is the first of two sequential modules focusing on professional practice. This course introduces students to, and explores the importance of, communication, ethics, law and the attributes of professional roles in health care as a basic foundation to professional practice for health care students. 

Learning opportunities will focus on developing professionalism and inter-professional collaboration, understanding ethical principles and common legal and regulatory frameworks to guide decision making in health care settings. Students will also be equipped with the knowledge and skills around compassionate, empathetic and person-centred, inter-personal communication.

3. SPH1904C: Data Literacy for Healthcare (Year 1)

Society, and healthcare, in particular, are increasingly evidence-based and data-driven. To understand and use scientific evidence for evidence-based practice, a clear understanding of the underlying epidemiological and biostatistical concepts is necessary to evaluate underlying clinical evidence critically. 

This course not only introduces principles to critically appraise healthcare data and literature, but also emphasizes their practical application. Students will learn to apply these concepts when providing evidence-based recommendations to their patients, thereby directly impacting patient care. The course also demonstrates the transferability of these skills to non-healthcare settings.

4. MD1903C: Professional Practice 2: Basic Skills in Health Professionalism (Year 2)

In this course, students will build on established knowledge and skills provided in MD1902C on communication, ethics and law to professional practice in health care.

Students will be introduced to skills in legal and ethical reasoning and argumentation in addressing commonly-occurring ethical and legal issues in practice. Furthermore, principles and skills for effective communication and inter-personal relationships will be expanded in this module. In addition, aspects of inter-disciplinary collaboration, organisational and cultural boundaries, effective teamwork behaviours as well as communication strategies to foster collaborative working relationships will be introduced.

5. BMI1101C: Digital Literacy for Healthcare (Year 2)

The practice of healthcare is increasingly digitalized, presenting opportunites and challenges for improving health and patient outcomes. This course provides a foundation for digital literacy in healthcare, covering computational thinking as an approach to problem solving and the evaluation and responsible use of digital tools, ranging from information finding to electronic health records to AI/machine learning and telemedicine.