Centre for Medical Education

Centre for Medical Education (CME) established in 1983 at Mohakhali, Dhaka with the technical assistance of WHO and UNDP. Initially, the Centre started as a project to provide community-oriented medical education and to train medical teachers. CME has the following objectives: (i) to organise, conduct and evaluate programmes of continuing professional development (CPD) of the health professions; (ii) to maintain liaison with other providers responsible for training of health professionals; (iii) to work in association with health professionals and their employers to carry out training needs analysis and to design training programmes; (iv) to conduct training programmes on educational science for the trainers of health and allied sciences; (v) to evaluate educational and training programmes within a framework of quality assurance in medical education; (vi) to develop innovative approaches to the training of health personnel; (vii) to conduct research related to CPD in the health profession, education, and training; and (viii) to design and produce media-based materials for use in health professions, education and training.

The Centre started conducting workshops on teaching methodology from November 1985 and has plans to offer Certificate, Diploma and Masters courses in Medical Education. The major achievements of the Centre include development of a curriculum for undergraduate medical education, which was implemented from the academic session 1988-89; reviewing and revising the curriculum for the Medical Assistants Training Schools (MATS) in 1987; and establishment of Medical Education Units in 8 medical colleges, National Institute for Preventive and Social Medicine (nipsom) and the then Institute of Post-Graduate Medicine and Research (IPGM&R) which is at present known as Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU). The Centre is headed by a director. In addition to 10 academic members, the Centre has about a hundred medical educationists working in different Medical Colleges and other institutes as adjunct faculty members. CME offers technical assistance to various departments/organisations including the Department of Health Economics, university of dhaka, and UNICEF. [M Muzaherul Huq]