Basic Medical Sciences Department, College of Medicine, QU Health, Qatar University, PO Box 2713, Doha, Qatar.
College of Education, Qatar University, PO Box 2713, Doha, Qatar.
BMC Med Educ. 2024 Jun 6;24(1):635. doi: 10.1186/s12909-024-05618-5.
Curriculum integration is an important educational concept widely implemented by various educational institutions, particularly within the healthcare field. Its significance lies in enhancing the preparation of future healthcare professionals. The assessment of these integrated curricula is imperative to guarantee their effectiveness. Consequently, the aim of this systematic review is to delve into existing literature, with the goal of identifying instruments designed to assess the extent of curriculum integration in health professions' education.
A comprehensive search was conducted to identify peer-reviewed papers and grey literature describing the development, validation, or use of instruments measuring the degree of integration in a curriculum. Eight databases were searched: PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, CINAHL Ultimate, Web of Science, Cochrane, ProQuest Central and EMBASE. Grey literature was also included. Titles, abstracts, and full text screening was conducted. Data extraction was done using a data extraction tool developed by our research team.
The search resulted in the identification of 2094 references. After the removal of duplicates and title and abstract screening, 16 articles were deemed suitable for inclusion in this systematic review. Twenty-two instruments were extracted from these articles. The identified instruments assessed either integration attributes, perceptions about the integrated curriculum characteristics, process and outcomes, or curriculum integration level. Two of the instruments were focused on assessing horizontal integration (Basic Science Curriculum Assessment Instrument and the integration characteristic tool). In addition, one instrument was developed to assess integration within a single session only, while other instruments assessed curriculum integration level. Two of the integration instruments (The Session Integration Tool and Integration Ladder Questionnaire) provided scales for calculating integration levels. Validation of the integration assessment instruments was infrequent, with only 9 of 22 instruments validated for their psychometric properties.
Our findings reveal the existence of diverse instruments designed to assess the extent of curriculum integration within health professions' curricula. The majority of identified instruments were focused on participants' perceptions towards the attributes of the integrated curriculum, and a significant number of these tools lacked validation.
课程整合是一个被广泛应用于各类教育机构的重要教育理念，尤其是在医疗保健领域。其重要性在于提升未来医疗保健专业人员的能力。因此，评估这些整合课程是非常有必要的，以确保其有效性。本系统评价的目的是深入研究现有文献，旨在确定评估卫生专业教育课程整合程度的工具。
我们全面检索了同行评议文献和灰色文献，以确定描述开发、验证或使用评估课程整合程度的工具的文章。共检索了 8 个数据库：PubMed、Scopus、Google Scholar、CINAHL Ultimate、Web of Science、Cochrane、ProQuest Central 和 EMBASE。同时也包括灰色文献。对标题、摘要和全文进行筛选。使用我们研究团队开发的数据提取工具提取数据。
检索共确定了 2094 篇参考文献。经过去重和标题及摘要筛选后，有 16 篇文章符合本系统评价的纳入标准。从这 16 篇文章中提取了 22 个工具。这些工具评估了整合属性、对整合课程特征、过程和结果的看法、或课程整合水平。其中 2 个工具专注于评估横向整合（基础科学课程评估工具和整合特征工具）。此外，还有 1 个工具仅用于评估单个课程单元的整合，其他工具则用于评估课程整合水平。2 个整合工具（课程整合评估工具和整合阶梯问卷）提供了计算整合水平的量表。对整合评估工具的验证并不频繁，只有 22 个工具中的 9 个进行了心理测量学特性的验证。
我们的研究结果表明，存在着多种用于评估卫生专业课程整合程度的工具。已确定的大多数工具都集中在参与者对整合课程属性的看法上，其中许多工具都缺乏验证。
