Cost-effective curriculum planning in health education.

Given the rigorous demands of regulatory agencies and the funding cutbacks prevalent in current educational institutions, educators must find new ways to incorporate modern advances in their respective fields into already overcrowded curricula. This article describes a major problem facing educators today, outlines various methods that have been used (for the most part, unsatisfactorily) to solve the dilemma, and posits a systematic approach to modern curriculum planning that has been field tested at the Kettering Medical Center School of Medical Technology. By way of illustration of this process, the authors include data gathered during development of the cost-effective curriculum planning approach. While the method described in this article has been expressly designed for the allied health professions, its theory and recommendations may be generalized to virtually any field.