Competency-based education is a form of designing, developing, delivering and documenting instruction based on a set of objectives and results that have been recommended for medical education. This article describes the steps in the process of designing and implementing a competency-based curriculum at a new medical school in a Peruvian university. We present the process followed including context analysis, mission design, the professional profile, the content and organization of the curriculum as well as the evaluation and resources for the training. Finally, issues and challenges faced, as well as lessons learned are summarized.

Objetivo: Describir las características de los cursos de investigación y la producción científica de sus docentes en las escuelas de medicina del Perú. Métodos: Se realizó un estudio descriptivo, con los datos de las 32 escuelas de medicina del Perú existentes al 2011, las currículas de los cursos de investigación de estas escuelas, y los docentes de dichos cursos. Se evaluó el número de cursos, docentes y sus publicaciones. Resultados: La mediana de créditos de investigación fue 5,5 [rango 2 a 18] por escuela, y la mediana del porcentaje del total de créditos fue de 1,75% [rango 0,6 a 6,3]. En 18/32 (56%) escuelas existió algún curso en el que se solicitó al estudiante la presentación de un informe final, pero solo una escuela tuvo algún curso que incluyó prácticas de envío a publicación. Además, solo 5 (15,6%) escuelas contaron con algún docente que haya publicado al menos un artículo original como autor corresponsal en Scopus alguna vez en su vida. Conclusión: Los cursos de investigación de las escuelas de medicina del Perú no enseñan el proceso de publicación en revistas indizadas y los docentes de estos cursos tienen una baja producción científica.

An observational study was conducted to describe the presence of plagiarism in medical thesis in 2008 performed at a public university in Peru. Search for plagiarism in 33 thesis introductions using a Google search algorithm, characterizes of the study type and we search in electronic form if the thesis mentor have published articles in scientific journals. We found evidence of plagiarism in 27/33 introductions, 37.3% (171/479) of all the paragraphs analyzed had some degree of plagiarism, literal plagiarism was the most frequent (20/27) and journals were the most common sources of plagiarism (19/27). The characteristics of the studies were observational (32/33), cross-sectional (30/33), descriptive (25/33) and retrospective (19/33). None of the authors had published in a scientific journal, and only nine of his tutors of them had at least one publication. No association was found between the characteristics of the thesis and the presence of plagiarism. In conclusion, we found a high frequency of plagiarism in theses analyzed. Is responsibility of medical schools take the necessary actions to detect and avoid plagiarism among their students.

Objectives. To evaluate the frequency of publication and its associated factors by professors of scientific research in medical schools in Peru. Materials and methods. This was a cross-sectional study. We included all teachers of research courses from the 32 medical schools in Peru in 2011. The publication search was conducted using Google Scholar, Scopus and Medline. Both the crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (aPR) were calculated with confidence intervals at 95% using simple and multiple Poisson regression with robust variance. Results. Of the 201 university teachers, 43.8% had never published an article in a journal, 26.9% had an original article published in a journal indexed in Medline and 16.4% did so in the past two years. Only 3% had been corresponding authors in non-Peruvian, indexed journals Factors associated with having an original article published in Medline in the past two years were: being under 40 years of age (aPR 2.97, 95% CI: 1.21-7.32), being a professor at a university where a final thesis is required for graduation (aPR 8.84, 95% CI: 2.60-30.12) and working for a highly productive university (aPR 3.24, 95% CI: 1.03-10.20). Conclusions. The frequency of publication of research faculty in medical schools in Peru is low. Young university teachers and those working at scientifically productive universities were more likely to publish in an indexed journal.

We surveyed physicians who obtained their medical degree with a thesis in 2011 from the seven medical schools in Lima to know the characteristics of the degree by thesis process, as well as participants’ motivations and perceptions of that process. We included 98 students who did a thesis (87% of total); 99% conducted observational thesis, 30% did so in groups of three. The main motivation was that it was good for their curriculum vitae (94%). At the university where the thesis is compulsory, the process began with the choice of topic and adviser. Perceived “greatest” and “least” difficulty in the process was the completion of administrative procedures (53%) and selection of their advisor (11%), respectively. Administrative timeliness and processes should be reviewed so as not to impede the completion of thesis, since the new University Act requires the completion of a thesis to graduate.