FIMA Year Book 2009 - Federation of Islamic Medical Associations

Quality Assurancebusiness. None of these systemsof quality assurance proved to beeffective as a single entity. Totalquality management (TQM) and itsapplication in a health care institutionhas remarkably improved the standardof service provision and professionalsatisfaction. Quality assurance canbe achieved through other models ofquality care as well. There are soundreasons for being quality conscious ina medical organization and especiallywhere teaching and training are alsobeing provided to the health careworkers. (6)There are several reasonsfor today’s quality consciousness:ethical, economical, professionalsatisfaction, customer’s need andothers. Quality assurance should be anessential mechanism operating in anyhealth care facility.However, TQM model alone hascertain inherent difficulties in itsapplications in academic institutions.Many questions of academic interestcan not be answered in the TQMmodel. Experts have proposed othermodels in addition to TQM to addressthe unanswered questions of qualityassurance in academic institutions:Harvey and Knight (1996) presented‘transformation model’ EngagementModel of Program Quality’. (7) Theseprograms invest in five separateclusters of program attributes, eachof which contributes to enriching thelearning experiences for students.These includes: Diverse and EngagedParticipant, Participatory Culture,Interactive Teaching and Learning,Connected Program Requirementand Adequate Resources. Thistheory advances a new perspectiveon program quality management,support for students, faculty and basicinfrastructure. In broad terms, theengagement theory emphasizes studentlearning as the primary purpose ofhigher education.In 1998, Bowden and Marton proposedthe University of Learning Model (8) ,and postulated that in all the commonlyperceived functions of a university:teaching, research or communityinvolvement, the core process is oneof learning, arguing that ‘quality in auniversity context has a lot to do withthe quality of learning and the qualityof learning has a lot to do with qualitiesof different ways of seeing when thelearner widens the range of possibilitiesof seeing the same thing.The University of learning model ismore appropriate because:1. Teaching, research, and service aredistinguished only by the durationand level at which learningtakes place: teaching serves tofacilitate learning at the level ofthe individual student; serviceinvolves learning at the locallevel; and research contributes toknowledge formation on a societywidebasis.2. For students to be able to copewith the unknown future ongraduation, the curriculumFIMA YearBook 2009158