Back to the program

Evaluation of the level of integration and current status of operation of the integrated medical curriculum: a study focusing on the cardiovascular system course

Hoon-Ki PARK and Hyojeong LEE

The integrated curriculum aims to help students construct clinically meaningful knowledge. A systematic evaluation of content interconnection is necessary to assess its effectiveness. As curriculum autonomy has expanded following academic system reform, reviewing and refining each college’s integrated curriculum has become increasingly important.This study aimed to evaluate the level of integration and operational status of the cardiovascular system block to prepare basic data for future curriculum evaluation and improvement.We analyzed the cardiovascular system block delivered over four weeks (March 4–28, 2025) at Hanyang University. The course included 68 sessions (109 hours), which were conducted by 29 faculty members, and nine second-year students participated. The level of integration was assessed using three items scored on a 4-point scale. Scores were categorized as follows: Isolation (below 5), Initial (5 to under 8), Intermediate (8 to under 11), and Mature (11 to12). Students completed a survey after each session. Descriptive statistics were used, and a group interview was conducted after the course and qualitatively analyzed.The overall integration score of the cardiovascular system block was 8.60 (level of intermediate). The majority of sessions received an intermediate rating (n=48), followed by an initial rating (n=16) and a mature rating (n=1). No sessions received an isolation rating. Problem-based learning (PBL) and case-based teaching (CBT) had high integration scores (10.52 and 10.57). Students reported lower perceived integration when content or clinical cases were too detailed, rare, or broad.Reorganizing session order and using common clinical cases may enhance integration. For enhancing the overall integrated curriculum, future studies will compare faculty and student perspectives and explore integration in other system blocks.The block showed moderate integration, but deeper content-level nesting—defined as the structural embedding of concepts across sessions—was limited. Deep learning methods, like PBL and CBT, augmented integration.