spirituality and medicine:
curriculum development project

Introduction to curriculum design in medicine

Since 1993, medical education has been guided by the General Medical Council document Tomorrow's Doctors. This document proposes that medical school courses have well defined core content to be covered by all students, with a range of optional components to allow individual students to study particular areas of interest in more detail.

Although many medical schools curricula now blur the traditional 'preclinical/clincal' split in medical courses, with students being introduced early to patient contact, nevertheless the first two years of medical courses tend to be more university- and science-based, whilst the last three years tend to be hospital based with a focus on clinical practice.

With the core/optional and clinical/preclinical divisions in mind, there are options for introducing three general types of course on spirituality:

» What does the GMC say about teaching spirituality?

» Teaching spirituality to preclinical students

» Teaching spirituality in the clinical years

» SSCs in spirituality

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