Kurt Gilliland, assistant dean of curriculum for the UNC School of Medicine, leads a tour of doctors from Iraq visiting UNC as part of a collaboration between UNC and the University of Baghdad’s College of Medicine to enhance its curriculum. Photo by Mark Derewicz.
This week, as first-year students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine engage in a new and different curriculum, a delegation of doctors from Iraq’s University of Baghdad is on campus meeting professors, doctors, administrators and students to learn how UNC is teaching the next generation of doctors.
The collaboration, funded through the International Medical Corps (IMC), aims to enhance the curricula in the 23 medical schools throughout Iraq, starting with the University of Baghdad College of Medicine. Iraq’s education system has already moved to a six-year education model common to European universities, where students begin their medical education at age 18. But Iraqi medical educators turned to UNC to learn how a top American medical school revamped its curriculum to improve an already top-tier institution.
The Iraqi delegation is visiting classrooms to observe UNC’s new curriculum in action, including how UNC professors integrate basic science with real-life examples of disease states that students will see in the clinic.
