The issue of mandatory versus elective tips is one that provokes passionate discussion and fierce disagreement, for good reason.
Regardless of mandatory or elective status, over 85% of our respondents agreed that EM and non-EM bound students should enroll in the clerkship, which supports the conclusion that all students can benefit from the experience.
Various strategies are being employed for this purpose, e.g. mandatory and elective research assignments, student sections in indexed journals, organization of students' scientific conferences, molding of medical curriculum to integrate capacity building for research and holding of workshops on different aspects of conducting research [7].
There is still much debate regarding whether PPE should be a mandatory or elective learning activity [ 4, 11].
The information search was specific to descriptions of both mandatory and elective components of the curriculum relating to 'primary care'generalral practice', or 'community medicine'.
In Canada, the majority of medical schools have either mandatory or elective rural medicine placement or learning experiences during undergraduate medical education, as well as rural family medicine streams.
The literature presents some experiences of linking disciplinary curricula for UR with the first year of medical school that quantitatively evaluate mandatory or elective programs [ 8, 11], focusing on their production [ 9], citation impact [ 4, 11], teacher/student involvement [ 4, 7], number of projects developed and distribution of these in diverse medical areas [ 8, 9].
" The training program should include both core (mandatory) courses and elective courses.
[FGD, female, MPH5] " Advanced universities in the world have mandatory courses and elective courses in their training programs.
