Climate change has been stated as one of the biggest existential threats the world is facing today¹. World Economic Forum in its Global Risk Report, 2019 warned that in relation to the environment “the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe”².

In view of these threats, it is increasingly being realised that medical institutions need to respond to growing environmental challenges and now a concept of environmental accountability within the framework of social accountability of medical schools has been introduced³. NUMS Department of Health Professions Education in collaboration with Adm. Directorate, DT Directorate and Heads of Departments took an initiative to conduct a session to raise awareness amongst its faculty and staff and propose plan a to make NUMS a Zero Waste Campus.

A talk was arranged at NUMS PWD Campus by the department facilitated by Dr Adeela Bashir faculty NDHPE on January 20, 2021.

Faculty from all the NUMS departments actively participated in this interactive session complying with COVID 19 precautions. Participants suggestions were taken and volunteers for taking the initiative forward, were sought.  

 References:

1. https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/05/1009782
2. World Economic Forum (WEF). The global risks report 2019.
3. Pearson D, Walpole S, Barna S. Challenges to professionalism: social accountability and global environmental change. Medical Teacher. 2015 Sep 2;37(9):825-30.

An innovative blended learning program customized to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes required for all scholarly academic activities that cut across boundaries of all health professions.

The program is unique with a distant learning component blended with face to face contact sessions for hands-on activities, experiential learning and assessments. To facilitate faculty of NUMS institutions which are present in multiple cities, the face to face contact sessions are conducted at multiple venues. Distance learning is spaced between two face to face contact sessions. Moodle® software, customized for the program, is used by the students and faculty for access to learning material, discussion and assessment of each course.

CHPE 2019:

CHPE-2019 conducted from March- August for 129 participants. Face to face sessions were conducted at six venues for five days each at Rawalpindi, Quetta, Multan and Lahore.

CHPE 2020:

CHPE 2020 (spring) for 250 participants was launched on December 31, 2019 and is currently ongoing. Face to face sessions have been conducted for 5 groups of participants at Rawalpindi, 2 for Mardan, and one each at Multan, Karachi, Quetta, and Lahore centres.

CHPE 2020 Fall will be conducted between September 2020 to March 2021, and will be announced soon.

NUMS Faculty Development Program for Health Professions Education

Many affiliated NUMS institutes are located in different regions of Pakistan where a large number of civilians, as well as uniformed faculty with no access to quality training programs. A comprehensive program has been developed and implemented for our geographically diverse faculty.

Since 2018, an ongoing series of workshops have so far trained more than 300 participants from all the Constituent & Affiliated Colleges and Specialty Institutes of NUMS at Rawalpindi, Wah, Bahawalpur, Multan, Quetta and Karachi. 

The following workshops are offered:

1. Curriculum Development and Quality Assurance in Written Assessment
2. Quality Assurance in Performance Assessment
3. Instructional Strategies – Promoting Active Learning

Biological Sciences:

1. Three-day series of workshops on Curriculum, instruction and assessment.
2. Seminar on E learning for faculty of Biological Sciences.

Department of Dentistry AM College:

Three-day series of workshops on Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment

Army Medical College:

Post Hoc analysis

HPE team is also contributing to the NEB exam being conducted by NUMS for PM&DC. Since 2017 three cycles of exam catering to over thirty thousand Pakistani graduates of foreign universities have been held for PM&DC. HPE team is actively involved in moderation and paper selection for these exams based on evidence-based quality assurance processes for written as well as performance exams. Our team has conducted a 15-station OSCE for over three thousand students in the last two years.

Fully cognizant of the significance of transformational research, multiple multi center, interventional educational research projects are being undertaken by NDHPE faculty. The faculty is actively engaged in research in the domains of their interest.