I am happy to take over as President of Academy of Health Professions Educators (AHPE) India, an organization of enthusiastic, energetic and erudite educators across all the disciplines of Health Science in India. At the outset I thank the AHPE for giving me this honour and opportunity to serve the academy, which I shall do to the best of my abilities.
Currently, we are going through both unprecedented as well as exciting times. Unprecedented because COVID-19 has ravaged our lives like never before, it has disrupted our lives in health, economy, and education, social, cultural and all other aspects. Education, particularly Health Professions Education (HPE) has been the biggest casualty of this pandemic, nevertheless it has opened up new opportunities and a new normal is evolving.
It is also exciting time because a lot is happening, particularly in HPE. COVID has compelled us to use technology in our teaching-learning process. We were talking about blended learning and flipped classroom, simulation-based learning and use of technology in teaching-learning but sparsely use it. COVID has fast forwarded all this, the lessons learned during this time will certainly be useful for enhancing the learner experiences and overall enhancing the teaching-learning process.
Secondly, the roll out of new Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) curriculum by the MCI/NMC. This paradigm shift has changed the focus from discipline-based, traditional curriculum to competency-based, integrated curriculum, here the emphasis of all the teaching-learning activities is on “ability to do and/or perform”, rather than ability to know. The challenge and the responsibility on all of us is to successfully navigate through these changes, adapt to new normal as early as possible as well as to successfully implement the much needed CBME curriculum.
We at the AHPE have the onus and responsibility to be leaders in bringing about this change, empower and encourage our faculty, help to fulfil the aspirations of our faculty and students and finally be the change we want it to happen.
It will be my endeavour to carry on the good work of my predecessors, and create innovative opportunities for capacity building in HPE. I want to take all the specialities in Health Sciences together, foster interdisciplinary and interprofessional collaborations, promote the concepts of educational scholarship and bring HPE with global standards. Finally our ultimate goal is to carve out Competent, Confident, Compassionate and Creative physicians out of novices. I am sure you will join with me in this journey.
Best wishes
Sincerely,
Dr Vivek A Saoji