Updates in Medical Colleges’ Curriculum in Iraq
Taqi Mohammed Jwad Taher
Family and Community Medicine Department, College of Medicine, Wasit University – Iraq
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Article history:
Medical colleges are the only places where doctors earn their knowledge and skills for their
future career roles in treating patients and helping the community. The curriculum taught in
these colleges has a vital role in preparing them for postgraduate continuous education as the
sciences in general and medicine in special have been modernized and updated. There are
different types of curricula used in Iraqi colleges of medicine, the most prominent one was the
traditional subject based. Relatively, the best curriculum used is the summation of the
integrated, student-centered, and community-based. The best available way to evaluate the
medical curriculum in Iraq is by the certificate of the accreditation standard issues of the
National Iraqi Council for Accreditation.
Copyright © 2023 Biomedicine and Chemical Sciences. Published by International Research and
Publishing Academy – Pakistan, Co-published by Al-Furat Al-Awsat Technical University – Iraq. This is an
open access article licensed under CC BY:
 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
Received on: September 17, 2022
Revised on: October 01, 2022
Accepted on: October 02, 2022
Published on: January 01, 2023
Keywords:
Curriculum
Integrated
Iraq
Medical colleges
Problem-solving
Subject-based curriculum
1. Introduction
1The general term curriculum represents “the academic
content and lessons taught in a school or educational
institution or a specific course or program”. It also
represents a plan that is arranged in a good matter leading
the educational processes. Another explanation for the
curriculum is an experience of knowledge and practices that
are forwarded to students in a standard way. It was defined
by different educators and philosophers like John Dewey as”
a continuous reconstruction, moving from the learner's
present experience out into that represented by the
organized bodies of truth that we call studies” (Mizan, 2022).
The medical college is one of the colleges and schools that
uses curriculum to reach its mission. The delivery of
doctors who can manage the health problems and deal with
the changes and updates in community needs regarding
community health priorities is still the main objective of the
medical college up to date. This cannot be reached without

*Corresponding author: Taqi Mohammed Jwad Taher, Family
and Community Medicine Department, College of Medicine, Wasit
University – Iraq
E-mail: ttahir@uowasit.edu.iq
How to cite:
Taher, T. (2023). Updates in Medical Colleges’ Curriculum in Iraq. Biomedicine
and Chemical Sciences, 2(1), 07–10.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48112/bcs.v2i1.318
the full participation of other health sectors, related
governmental agenesis, and community presenter (AlDamegh et al., 2005).
In addition to theoretical learning, clinical training is the
goal of medical colleges to graduate doctors who can
practice medicine in their career life. All these missions and
goals can be reached by implementing the appropriate
curriculum. This curriculum was continuously modernized
during the last periods to be consistent with the explosion of
medicine and science (Yu et al., 2021).
There is a massive development in scientific research and
using their result to enhance new ways and protocols in
disease prevention, management, and control. Also,
community health problems and priorities may expand and
change over time which needs further modification in their
study (Mishra, 2015). The new challenge is now what new
subjects are needed to be added and what are of no value to
be taught. Besides, changing the direction of more studentcentered and self-directed learning rather than teachercentered and classroom lectures (D'eon & Crawford, 2005).
World Health Organization (WHO) in addition to different
medical associations like the American Association of
Medical Colleges (AAMC) and Council of World Federation
for Medical Education (CWFME) proposed the demand of
adjusting the teaching systems in medical colleges to be
based on comprehension instead of just remembering the
information (Hulail et al., 2018).