FIMA Year Book 2009 - Federation of Islamic Medical Associations

Problem Based Learninghis immediate family; and strive touse wisdom in all his decisions”. (28)Inculcation of principals of PBL inIMI is a natural consequence once aneducational system is committed toIMI. IMI demands a basic paradigmchange from conventional teaching ofmedicine. It places the physician in theposition of a servant of Allah ratherthan the “Godplayer” role assigned tophysicians in the West. Such paradigmor attitude change is possible after theprinciples of “Affective or Attitudinal”education are followed.Educational psychologists have drawnon findings from a number of studiesto create a series of six guidelines foreffective design of attitude instruction.The best set of guidelines, which is mostfrequently used in adult instruction, isform Simonson and Maushak, (29) . Theseare:1. Make the instruction realistic,relevant, and technically stimulating2. Present new information3. Present persuasive messages in acredible manner4. Elicit purposeful emotionalinvolvement5. Involve the learner in planning,production or delivery of the message6. Provide post-instruction discussionor critique opportunitiesA review of principles and benefits ofPBL given earlier in this paper showsthe close concordance of PBL strategywith the requirements of IMI.Institutional commitment is thefoundation to any educationalintervention. Once an institution ofmedical education is committed toplacing IMI as its main instructionalstrategy, the next step is involvementof its faculty and staff in this processof change of paradigms. A series ofworkshops and interactive sessionsshould be conducted in order to giveeveryone an opportunity to voice theiropinions and have their reservationsaddressed at the outset. The next andmost important step from here onwardsis curricular revision and innovationsneeded to place identified areas of IMI tobe integrated with medical curriculum.It is the opinion of the author thata SPIRAL integration of medicalcurriculum with pre-identified coreareas of IMI in tandem with medicalsubjects is the most suitable amongknown designs of medical instruction.It is easy to visualize for someone withbasic know-how of PBL strategy thatstudents can be asked problems thatdirectly or indirectly address aspectsof Islamic medical ethics or IslamicCivilization. PBL packages can bewritten so that participants researchissues related to Shari’ah or Fiqh inorder to understand the trigger problemcompletely.For purpose for further clarificationof the concept of Islamic PBL, let usconsider a PBL trigger given students ofsecond year medical studies:“You are working as senior medicalofficer in a basic health unit in a poorslum area near a big city. On onemorning, you are seeing patients inyour daily OPD when a young womanFIMA YearBook 200953