Ways to address the challenges of a modern medical curriculum: Living academic medicine at the University of Split, School of Medicine

Structure of a modern medical curriculum should follow recommendationsof professional bodies (like World Federation for Medical Education)in order to educate and train medical professionals equippedwith problem solving/critical thinking skills entering a world ofevidence-based medicine and demands of contemporary medicalpractices. Also, political and socio-economic realities in addition totraditional and cultural values should be taken into account in orderto avoid creating an unsustainable program. Requests for curricularchanges by the European Union Commission were used as a chanceto shape our program into an original blend of traditional pre-clinical and clinical subjects with several vertically integrated subjects focusing on mastering clinical skills, professional attitudes, information management and critical as well as evidence-based reasoning and decision making. Reasons for introducing curricular changes in addition to detailed structure of current medical course at the University of Split School of Medicine is presented in this paper.