RAWALPINDI: The Rawalpindi Medical University (RMU) has been ranked second after King Edward Medical University in terms of merit for admissions in MBBS/BDS programmes in Punjab.

The list displayed by University of Health Sciences (UHS) for admissions in 2022-23 showed that last merit of King Edward Medical University was 93.56pc while that of RMU is 93.26pc, so, the difference between the two universities is of 0.3 points only.

In 2021 and 2022, RMU was ranked first among medical universities of Pakistan by the Impact Times Higher Education (THE). THE is an international agency which gives ranking to universities. RMU was established in 2017 and in a period of five years it has become the fastest growing university of Pakistan.

RMU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mohammad Umar told Dawn that this has happened for the first time in history that merit of RMU was raised from sixth to second position in the merit list for admissions in MBBS.

He said the reason for this fast growth is that RMU was the only public sector university in Punjab which adopted Clinically Oriented Integrated Modular System (IMS) of teaching since 2018.

“This is the modern system of teaching, training, and assessment in the first world. This system is in accordance with the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) standards.

“Recently, WFME stressed upon Pakistan Medical and Dental Council to preferably adopt IMS for Pakistan,” he said.

Secondly, he said that the RMU curriculum is research oriented, well structured and aligned with United States Medical Licencing Examination (USMLE) and Education Commission for foreign medical graduates (ECFMG).

“Research and medical ethics are taught to students from first year to final year. Both these sections are assessed in the examination also. Students publish their research in their own journal. The official journal is called the Students’ Journal of Rawalpindi Medical University. Students are also taught clinical integration from first year,” he said.

Prof Umar also elaborated that there are special workshops for the faculty members of RMU for their training to teach the modern curriculum according to modern teaching strategies like large group discussion (LGD), small group discussion (SGD), problem-based learning (PBL), self directed learning (SDL) and learning management system (LMS).

“Students are provided with online education sources and online assessments are also done while 30pc marks of continuous internal assessment are an integral part of their final examination mark sheet,” he said.

Along with high teaching standards, he said that RMU has renovated its hostels and playground. “This had a great impact on the extracurricular activities in RMU, which is also equipped with Pakistan Education Research Network (PERN) for students and faculty.

“Students and faculty use the latest learning and teaching facilities like digital libraries and research journal. RMU is the only public sector medical university in Punjab which is running a master’s programme in Professional Health Education (MHPE) to train the faculty for modern teaching strategies,” he said.

Prof Umar expressed hope that RMU would be the top medical university of Punjab next year in terms of admissions.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2022