Curriculum reform in an Australian medical school : a narrated journey

This study investigates curriculum reform in an Australian Medical School which has taken the decision to significantly reform its medical curriculum. The thesis elucidates the lived experience of key members of the curriculum reform team that was established in support of this decision. The study is located in the three year curriculum planning phase leading up to the decision by the external accrediting body to permit the medical school to replace the long standing 6-year traditional program with a shorter better (5-year) integrated and case based medical curriculum. The major premise of this study is that through an understanding of the lived experience of change by medical faculty in a medical school undergoing significant curriculum reform and governance restructure, it will be possible to better appreciate the complexity of change in the medical education setting. The aim is to enhance (and problematise) established theoretical understanding of change management in a medical school using narrative inquiry which permits a more in depth and detailed understanding of curriculum reform in the context of the medical school. Data collected over the three years of the study included the author's personal reflexive journal, interviews with contemporary colleagues on the curriculum reform team, all text data generated by the curriculum planning project over the three years and interviews with former Deans of the same medical school from the school's inception in 1965. A greater awareness of the lived experience of curriculum reform in medical education is particularly relevant as medical schools nationally and internationally seek to adopt best practice in training future doctors. Increased accountability as well as educational and health care developments call for increased sophistication on the part of medical teachers within medical schools who are called upon to continually examine how best to educate future health professionals.