The University of Zambia (UNZA) has disclosed that student who have completed Advanced levels (A-levels) will be able to complete medicine in 5 years. UNZA has discovered that students studying medicine and nursing sciences can adequately be trained within six years and four years respectively.
UNZA Public Relations Manager Damaseke Chibale said there was a review of the curriculum by experts and it has been found that the number of years of the two science programmes can be reduced and will be sufficient for someone to graduate with a degree.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, Chibale said the students will be given the needed quality training adding that the institution has over the years realised that there are certain things that are not very important in the study of medicine.
He also said the trend in most countries is five and six years because the important thing is how the training is packaged adding that medicine training is a hands on programme and the first two-three years are spent in classrooms while the next three to four years involve practicals.
“Following the modern trends in medicine training and after strategically reviewing the curriculum, we have found that six years is adequate to train a medical doctor, so is four years to train someone in nursing sciences”, he said.
Chibale said the university keeps innovating and adopting the ICT technology so there was an exercise to review the curriculum and it was found that the medicine degree programme can be streamlined by one year by revising the curriculum.
He said the reason students used to take seven years was because they were doing A levels in the first year in the School of Natural Sciences because most secondary schools have no A levels.
He added that A levels require one to do the pure sciences so students who do A levels in secondary school start from second year when they enroll into the university.
“In a situation where a student has done A levels and they got maybe a B-general grade in all the science courses, this student will start in second year”, he said. He said with the reduction in the number of years for the programme, the student will only take five years to complete the programme.
He noted that for most European countries, students spend two-three years in class learning about deep sciences and after that they get into hospitals to get practical and learn about the applied medical practice which is the critical part in training.
“If you look at the US or UK universities training medicine, the entry will require that you must do A levels so that they don’t spend one year doing the A levels because they have already been done, so the degree in medicine varies between 5-6 years depending on the method of teaching”, he said.
The University of Zambia has reduced the years of study for medicine from seven years to six years whereas the nursing science programme will now run for four years instead of five years. This change is expected to flow through all the other public higher learning institutions such as the Copperbelt University – CBU and Mulungushi University which offer medicine.
