Best Practices of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centres (WHOCCs) in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

BACKGROUND

World Health Organization Collaborating Centres (WHOCCs) cooperate with the WHO on a range of strategic areas such as nursing, nutrition, mental health, chronic diseases, education, and health technologies, depending on their speciality areas. As of 2021, WHO has 47 CCs in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) collaborating on diverse areas. Four CCs in the EMR located in Egypt, Kingdom of Bahrain, Sudan, and Pakistan focus primarily on medical education (ME).

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this review of the literature is to describe the best practices in ME based on published research from the four WHOCCs in EMR. The secondary objective is to classify them based on the level of Kirkpatrick's model (KM) of educational outcomes.

METHODS

The contributions of WHOCCs are categorised in to five domains namely "Curriculum Development and Course Design", "Student Assessment", "Quality, Accreditation, and Program Evaluation", "Teaching and Learning" and "Innovation in Medical Education". Initial extraction yielded 96 articles for review, while the second level of analysis reduced the number of publications to 37 based on the date of publication within the last 5 years. Numerous best practices in ME emerged from the recently published works of these WHOCCs in the areas of learning and teaching, curriculum development, innovations in medical education, quality, and assessments in medical education. Literature from the WHOCCs on assessment and curriculum design are limited, possibly indicating opportunities for additional research.

CONCLUSION

The researchers conclude that the WHOCCs in the EMR show transformational impact on all principal areas of research and at multiple levels.