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.

 

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.

NUS Common Curriculum students interacting on campus staircase
Photo credit: National University of Singapore (NUS)

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 five pillars:

 

  1. Social and Behavioural Determinants of Health (Year 1)

This pillar examines the influence of social and environmental factors on important health outcomes in the life course and across vulnerable groups, as well as how these factors affect lifestyle, preventive, and curative behaviours.

 

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

Students will learn what makes a patient-centric healthcare professional through professional identity formation and communication skills. They will also gain an understanding of the legal and ethical principles underpinning the practice and delivery of health services.

 

  1. Data Literacy for Healthcare (Year 1)

This pillar features components of evidence-based practice, and covers the principles of data analysis as well as decision-making under uncertainty which are relevant to clinical practice.

 

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

Students will delve deeper into the ethical challenges that commonly arise in clinical practice, health systems, and research, to acquire practical skills in ethical reasoning as well as working and communicating well in multidisciplinary teams.

 

  1. Digital Literacy for Healthcare (Year 2)

This pillar explores skills such as computational thinking, data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning in the healthcare context, and more.

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