Korean J Med Educ. 1990; 2(2): 42-50.
Analysis of Anatomy Curricula of Twenty-Nine Medical Colleges in Korea
1College of Medicine, Chun Ang University, Seoul, Korea.
2College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
ABSTRACT
The anatomy curricula of 29 medical schools in Korea have been analyzed in terms of education hours and their academic credits, as well as compared with foreign medical schools which having similar curricula. In most of the Korean medical schools anatomy courses are offered in the initial phase of medical study as 4 independent subjects : gross anatomy, histology, neuroanatomy, and embryology. Anatomy, which comprises 4 separate subjects, occupied on the average about 10% of the total education hours and credits of the entire medical curricula. A noticeable difference in education hours and credits among the medical schools existed, the most obvious examples being 64 hours vs. 256 hours in gross anatomy laboratory and 9 hours vs. 76 hours in neuroanatomy laboratory, which revealed an almost four-fold and eight-fold gap between two most extreme medical schools. The pattern of anatomy curricula in Korean medical schools is similar to that of the Japanese but differs from that of the United States particularly in the ratio of lecture to laboratory hours.
