This was the concept adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its twenty ninth meeting and was also the central theme of the meeting of the ministers of education and health in Teheran (26 February - 2 March 1978). They called for complete coordination between educational institutions and health service agencies so that the first goal determining the policy of educational institutions should be to satisfy the needs of health services.

This important concept was reflected in the major role of the Egyptian Ministry of Health (MOH) in the planning and implementation of the curriculum of FOM-SCU. This concept is also evident through utilization of various health source outlets, including rural and urban units as well as (MOH) hospitals, as clinical and community training sites for students.

Third: Global progress in educational approaches especially in medical education. Experience has shown the inadequacy of rote learning to cope with the rapid increase and continuous change in medical knowledge and facts. Self learning has become a necessity. Again, problem-based learning is the best one suiting the nature of physician's work, so as to be able to carry out effectively his/her role to serve individuals and the community.

Fourth: The mandate of medical schools for training their graduates to be competent to satisfy community health needs requires that the physician of today or tomorrow should not just be a mere scientist or a skilled technologist. His/her vision and activities should extend beyond diseased organs or individuals to the family, community and even the environment as a whole.

This holistic view of the phenomenon of health and disease with regard to the individual, community and environment is a major component of FOM-SCU This school is considered a good model for innovation in medical education. The curriculum focuses on a bio-organic psychosocial perspective replacing the biomedical perspective which outlined the former medical curricula.

This is related to a new definition of health as a state of complete physical, mental, psychological and social well-being and not merely absence of disease or infirmity. The accelerated growth of information and scientific knowledge and the impact of the information revolution on learning approaches required that the main goal for teaching should not be to acquire and store the maximum amount of information, but to be able to understand, analyze, criticize and to solve problems, as well as comprehension of on-going change and ability to cope with it.

We can safely say that medical education is the science and art aiming at:

1- Graduating physicians for the future, able to practice satisfactorily in the community i .e., to become competent practitioners fit for joining any area of professional practice in an adequate, effective and human way.

2- Serving the community in which those graduates will practice so as to achieve the satisfaction of the beneficiaries from health services, administrators of those services and the graduates themselves.

The educational curriculum of FOM-SCU has been designed so as to achieve social commitment through four axes:

First: Compliance with the priority health problems.

Second: Quality of health care.

Third: Cost-effectiveness.

Fourth: Equity in distribution of health services.

FOM-SCU educational curriculum is a community-oriented, community-based, problem-based curriculum emphasizing the role of the student as a self-learner.

Community-Based Education:

This refers to having the community as an educational medium for training students. Within this educational system, community-based activities are integrated with those, taking place within the school, to guarantee full integration and horizontal and vertical harmonization of knowledge and skills to avoid unnecessary duplication of activities in successive years or dropping of important knowledge items or skills. It is also a method to develop the abilities of the student to work in a team, develop management and leadership skills, and improve the capacity of self- learning, self-evaluation and learning through rendering services.

Problem-Based Learning:

Problem-based learning necessitates reformulation of educational topics to be integrated into health problems drawn from actual professional practice rather than presenting them to the students separate from each other horizontally and vertically.

Topics are linked as areas or concepts. In this context, the student acquires knowledge in biomedical and psychosocial sciences in an integrated way through working in small groups, to study, analyze, comprehend and solve the given problems. The group has to determine the knowledge and skills required for solving the tackled problems in the form of educational objectives.

The students search for these objectives through different resources which include: the library, laboratories, clinical skills laboratory, or consultation of subject matter experts who are considered important educational sources, but not the only ones.

Tutors are essential for the educational process, its development and enrichment. Each group of students is assigned a trained tutor. The role of the tutors is subtle and restricted to facilitation of students' activities and their motivation to solve the given problem through self-learning at an adequate depth. The whole process is subjected to careful planning including selection and sequence of problems, adequate learning resources and evaluation.

Problem-based learning is especially suitable for medical education, since professional medical practice in all its forms is primarily dealing with health problems of individuals and communities. This requires recall of appropriate knowledge and skills to understand and solve the problem, necessitating a cognitive structure which cannot be acquired except through a system for gaining knowledge through problem solving.

Student-Centered Education:

One of the fundamental concepts of the educational process in FOM-SCU is that the student is the pivot of his/her own learning process. In problem-based learning whether in classes, field work or hospitals, it is the student who determines which information or skills are needed to solve the addressed problems.

At first, the tutors guide their students so that they acquire the necessary experience for determining learning objectives. Gradually, the students take over the whole responsibility for specification of knowledge and skills conducive to achievement of educational objectives.

This method motivates students and gives them a positive role in the educational process. They search and investigate through reading books and references, consulting with subject area experts, using audiovisuals and computers as well as attending some lectures and seminars and practice of different examination skills. This active approach helps students retain their knowledge and skills, recall and apply them in a better way than if acquired passively. It helps them also keep abreast of rapid evolution of information ( the information "boom"), since they are well-trained to reach the information items they want.