Global Medical Education in Normal and Challenging Times

Dr. Shabih H.  Zaidi is a Surgeon, Medical Educator, and Medical Ethicist, based in London. He has extensive experience in the field of medical education, as he has been teaching since 1972. Over the years , he  progressed from Assistant professor to Professor, Chair, Dean, and Vice Chancellor.  He is the Founding Chancellor of the Al -Sadiq Virtual  University of Health Sciences (SIVU. www.sivu.alsadiquni.com), an iconic project of Medics International, a UN accredited NGO based in Princeton, NJ, USA. Dr. Zaidi has written and published over 200 articles, papers, editorials etc in high-impact indexed journals, and 12 books so far. Three of his last books published by Springer (Vertigo, Ethics in medicine, Teaching and Learning in medicine) have gained much popularity as c60,000 chapters have been downloaded by global knowledge seekers. He is currently engaged in writing a book on Virtue Medical Ethics and  Editing an Encyclopaedia of Medical ethics. He pioneered a couple of journals over time and has been on the editorial board of several international journals, where he contributes regularly. The  virtual University launched in May 2020 by  him , for dissemination of knowledge through e-learning engaging a vast number of medical educators from many countries has now become an entity of considerable repute.  A selection of lectures given by global educators in SIVU  have  been compiled by him and his co-editors in this book, called the Global Medical Education in Normal and Challenging Times. 

Dr. Shahid Hassan is a qualified and experienced Educator with an MHPE from Maastricht University Netherlands in 2005. He has worked as Medical Educator in University Sains Malaysia (USM), Head of Unit of Medical Education in University Putra Malaysia (UPM), University Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), and Director, IMU Centre for Education at International Medical University (IMU), Malaysia. He has been awarded with the WIPO and ITEX Gold Medal and Excellent Scientist Award for Innovative research. He has published over 130 research papers and five books. He is an overseas Editor of Pakistan Journal of ORL (PJORL) and Member of Editorial Board of Interdisciplinary Journal of Virtual Learning in Medical Sciences (IJVLMS). He has been the Vice President of Malaysian Association of Educators in Medicine and Health Sciences (MAEMHS) and Lead of Assessment Subgroup of Medical Educators Network (MedNet) Malaysia. Dr. Hassan has supervised more than 20 postgraduate theses in Otolaryngology and medical education and given more than 110 presentations from keynote address to free papers in national and international conferences and conducted more than 35 workshops. He is currently working as Professor and Associate Dean Academic and Head of Medical Education Department American University of Barbados School of Medicine. He is also the Co-director of ERA-SIVU joint Program on HPE for Certificate and Diploma. Dr Hassan's major contribution in recent years has been over 25 international webinars and 10 articles based on unprecedented challenges and experience of the COVID-19 era. His recently published eBook is on, "Design and Development of Survey Questionnaire Using Likert Scale: From Validation to Usability" and yet another eBook in publication is about, Quantitative Research for  Educational Study Made Easy: Practical Statistics for Educators. Dr. Shahid Hassan is also an Otorhinolaryngologist with subspecialty in Head and Neck and Thyroid Surgery.

Dr. Shoaleh Bigdeli is a Professor at the Department of Medical Education, School of Medicine, and was Vice-director of the Center for Educational Research in Medical Sciences (CERMS) at Iran University of Medical Sciences (2018-2023). She received her doctorate in Curriculum Theories and Implementation from Simon Fraser University (SFU), Canada, as well as several certificates from FAIMER in medical education. She

Introduction - Part 1: Educational Concepts and Philosophies.- Part 2: Ready to practice graduates - Part 3: Students' involvement in career guidance.- Part 4: Professional development through interaction.- Part 5: Professionalism & Medical Ethics.- Part 6: Curriculum development - Part 7: Assessment & Evaluation.- Part 8: Learning resources and technology in medical education.- Part 9: Academic leadership.- Part 10: Research and scholarship.- Part 11: Globalisation of medical education.- Part 12: Medical education in the future.- Conclusion: Medical education is an art and a science. It is perpetually evolving. COVID-19 posed unprecedented challenges, enforcing rapid transition from conventional to many innovative techniques. It has changed the traditional method of paternalistic teaching, and synchronous F2F mode to a virtual synchronous/asynchronous mode transcending time and borders. Traditional classes changed to hyper flex formats and educational methodology became embedded with digital technology. Blended teaching is here to stay. We, believe that Medical and Health Professions Educationists (HPE), physicians, scholars, health workers and students, will benefit from this collection of wisdom of experts from several developing and developed countries.