King Ceasor University (KCU) has, as one of its Schools in the College of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences, a School of Medicine (SoM) whose focus is to train health professionals who are conversant with the health problems of the communities they serve; and who have knowledge, skills and above all, the appropriate attitude that will make them sufficiently competent to run health services so as to achieve global health goals. The SoM offers among other programmes, a 5-year programme leading to the award of a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) degree. This program is designed to produce medical doctors competent to practice in Uganda and beyond.
Rationale of The Programme
Globally and especially in developing countries, there is a mismatch between the number of health professionals and the growing population. In Uganda, statistics show that doctor to patient ratio is 1:24,725 and nurse/midwife- patient ratio 1:11,000. According to the 2011 Human Resources for Health Audit Report, with respect to national level staffing, the proportion of the filled approved positions was found to be 58 percent up from 56 percent in 2010. Out of 55,063 approved positions, only 31,797 are filled, leaving 23,321 vacant positions. It has been increasingly recognized that, to reduce the unsustainable increases in health care costs, the patient to doctor ratio, to mitigate for an aging physician population, shortage of primary care providers and achieve high quality health care, there is a need to shift from a medical education and health care delivery system focused on providing curative care to one designed to prevent and manage disease. Therefore, there is a need to train more and more doctors.
The more important question to be answered from a needs assessment regards the type of training such doctors require to make them functionally suitable to face the challenges of the 21st century. As a result, this revised curriculum is rooted in the convergence of medicine and engineering, computer sciences, quantitative sciences, and technology to teach the human body as an integrated system. This understanding of the human body as an integrated system is critical to the analytical, problem-solving skills needed to be a successful physician-scientist, physician-innovator, or physician-entrepreneur equipped with the knowledge and skills to transform the current health care system.
Programme Mission Statement
The program’s mission is to develop health professionals with leadership, management and communication skills; taking positions of influence through which they will contribute substantially to the health and well-being of the global community. The program aims at ensuring that research priorities are responsive to the felt needs of the community spearheading prioritization of primary healthcare for the majority of the people.
Programme Goals
The overarching goal of MBChB programme at KCU is to produce competent, compassionate, reflective and dedicated health care professionals who:
Programme Objectives
On successful completion of the MBChB program, students will have gained and demonstrated the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for them to practice medicine competently. Specifically, they will have acquired and demonstrated:
Knowledge and Understanding of
Professional skills necessary to:
Attitudes essential to the practice of medicine, including:
Roles and Functions of the MBChB Programme
The candidates who graduate from the KCU MBChB programme shall be a;
Admission Requirements
Five (5) entry points are available for persons wishing to enter the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) program:
In order to be eligible for direct entry into the MBChB prgoramme, a candidate must have;
In order to be eligible for direct entry into the MBChB program, a candidate whose final high school marks are graded in percentages and average point systems such as in Sudan, The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Burundi must have their grades first equated or standardized before seeking SAIU admission.
In order to be eligible for admission into the MBChB programme, diploma entry candidate must:
In order to be eligible for admission into the MBChB degree programme, degree entry candidate must:
Any candidate seeking for admission into the MBChB programme, who has been attending a similar programme (MBChB or equivalent) in another Institution of higher learning recognized by NCHE and SAIU senate shall:
In both situations (3.1.5 a and b above), each candidate shall produce the following documents before he/she is considered;
The duration of the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) degree programme shall extend over a period of not less than five (5) years, unless the School of Medicine Board recommends and the SAIU Senate approves otherwise. Each academic year shall be divided into two (2) semesters. In this curriculum, a semester shall consist of a period of instruction lasting for eighteen (18) weeks and examination of two (2) weeks. Therefore, the duration of the MBChB programme shall be equivalent to ten (10) semesters of biomedical, pathology and clinical courses. At the maximum, the programme shall not extend beyond fourteen (14) uninterrupted semesters i.e. without counting officially approved “dead” semesters.
The various courses in the programme will be delivered using a multifaceted approach in which strategies that encourage active learning will be the main ones used.
The strategies will include:
During implementation of a given course, some or all of these strategies may be used in a way that will ensure that they complement one another to enhance the students’ learning.
The courses in the programme are weighted using credit units of study (CU). A course shall carry a value of 2 to 10 credit units depending on the nature of content involved. In all cases;
The Marks obtained in each course shall be cumulated and averaged into the following letter grades that signify the level of performance in an individual student per unit and on aggregate, the final degree attained.
Percentage Mark | Grade Awarded | Grade Point |
80-100 | A | 5.0 |
75-79. 9 | B+ | 4.5 |
70-74 | B | 4.0 |
65- 69 | C+ | 3.5 |
60-64 | C | 3.0 |
55-59 | D+ | 2.5 |
50-54 | D | 2.0 |
0-49 | F | 0 |
Normal Semester Course Load
The minimum number of credit units per semester shall be fifteen (15). The maximum number of credit units per semester shall be twenty-eight (28).
Maximum Semester Course Load
The maximum number of Credit Units per Semester shall be twenty-eight (28) to cater for students who have courses to retake or those who are able to complete the requirements for their respective Academic Awards in less than the stipulated minimum duration.
The pass mark in any part of the examination and in the total (100%) mark for the course shall be 50% provided the clinical part of the exam in the clinical courses has been passed by scoring at least 50% out of the total marks for the component.
The GPA shall be calculated through three steps as shown below.
The following examples illustrate the computation of GPA.
Course Name | Grades | CU Value | Grade Point | |
Grade | GP | |||
Anatomy | A | 5.0 | 3 | 15.0 |
Physiology | C | 2.5 | 3 | 7.5 |
Biochemistry | B+ | 4.5 | 2 | 9.0 |
Introduction to Public Health | D | 1.0 | 3 | 3.0 |
Embryology & Histology | C- | 2.0 | 2 | 4.0 |
Totals | 13 | 38.5 | ||
GPA = 38.5 ¸ 13 = 2.96 for a semester |
The CGPA is the Grade Point Average obtained by a student up to that point, and is obtained as follows: –
Note: Do not just add the GPA for the first and second semesters and divide by two! This method sometimes gives incorrect results.
Continuous assessment shall contribute 40% of the final course marks. It shall take various forms, including:
Design of the Curriculum
The learning experiences are organized into three (3) phases, which spiral into each other with each phase courses being pre-requisite to the next phase courses. Phase I courses are pre-requisite to phase II.
Similarly, all phase II courses are pre-requisite for phase III courses.
Phase One: The Normal structure and Functions (Pre-clinical)
This phase includes courses that deal with the scientific basis of medical practice, especially the basic and applied/clinical sciences, including anatomy, physiology, immunology, microbiology, basic pharmacology
and epidemiology. The students are introduced to the hospital setting and patients during this phase.
Early clinical exposure will assist students to have an early introduction to the patients and the conditions under which they will work and relating it to the biomedical sciences.
At this level, also a number of courses are included, aimed at improving the doctor’s competences in other areas such as bio-statistics, public health and epidemiology, computer applications, behavioral communication skills, ethics and professionalism. This phase extends over a period of two
semesters.
Phase Two: The Abnormal Sand Functions (Pathology)
These include applied aspects of the various biomedical sciences such as general and systemic pathology, clinical microbiology/parasitology and clinical pharmacology and therapeutics. This phase shall extend over a period of two semesters.
Phase Three: Clinical Clerkship
This phase will consist of planned clinical placement rotations to provide core experience in key clinical areas including Internal Medicine, Child Health and Pediatrics, Reproductive Health and Obstetrics and
Gynaecology, Mental Health and Psychiatry, General Surgery and various specialized areas in surgery such as Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT), Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Radiology and Imaging. Other
areas sometimes regarded as specialties such as Tuberculosis, Leprosy, Dermatology, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) Oncology, Urology, cardiothoracic surgery, paediatric surgery, neural surgery and others are recognized and addressed in their “mother” disciplines such as Internal Medicine and surgery.
These courses are linked to the ethical, social and cultural issues appropriate to different clinical situations with an increased emphasis on medicines management and patient safety. This phase shall extend over a period of six semesters and divided into junior and senior clerkship. There shall be 8 weeks of an elective study period in-between junior and senior clerkship.
Copyright 2022 © King Ceasor University. All rights reserved.