The study highlights the divergent interpretation of medical professionalism between Western and Arabian contexts. The Four-Gates Model may work for faith-driven societies, but not for non-Muslims Arabs students or teachers or in institutions with humanistic values.

Objective:To review the current status of departments of medical education in all public and private medical colleges located in the city of Lahore, Pakistan.Methods:This was a quantitative, cross sectional descriptive study; conducted from March to October 2015 in Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PM&DC) recognized medical colleges located in Lahore, Pakistan. Respondents were the heads of departments of medical education or any other well-informed faculty member. A questionnaire was prepared to obtain information about the current status of the departments of medical education (DMEs). The investigator personally visited all medical colleges for data collection. Both verbal and written consents were obtained and the questionnaire was administered to the resource persons. The data was organized and entered in SPSS for descriptive analysis.Results:Out of the 18 medical colleges in Lahore, six (33.3%) belonged to public sector and 12 (66.7%) were from private sector. All medical colleges reported to have a functional DME. However, eight had established DMEs during the past five years. Only one (5.6%) head of DME was working on full-time basis. Eleven (61.1%) heads of DMEs did not have any formal qualification in medical education. Eight (44.4%) colleges claimed to have adequate human resources for DME. Thirteen (72.2%) colleges mentioned that adequate financial resources were available for running DMEs. It is encouraging to see that DMEs in private sector medical colleges are playing increasingly significant role in managing educational activities. Similarly, the senior management of private sector seems to be relatively more eager to promote educational activities.Conclusion:There is an increasing recognition towards establishing DMEs in the medical colleges, but their infrastructure, proper functioning and availability of human and financial resources are serious impediments requiring immediate attention.

A three-step approach (orientation workshop, vignettes development, and teaching professionalism) proved effective for faculty development for learning and teaching of professionalism. Professionalism can be taught using vignettes that demonstrate professionalism dilemmas in a particular context.

To the best of our knowledge, the LAMPS is the first context-specific inventory on medical professionalism attitudes in the Arabian context.

Objective: There are growing concerns towards the quality of medical education in Pakistan. To help strengthen accreditation processes, this study identifies the challenges towards quality assurance of Basic Medical Education in Pakistan. Methods: A qualitative case study was carried out from March to August 2018. Participants included inspectors from various disciplines in both public and private medical colleges, and medical educationists from Pakistan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 inspectors, while focus group discussion included 10 medical educationists. All the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis was conducted to capture the intricacies of meaning within the data. Results: Data identified 14 sub-themes grouped under three major themes. Challenges towards quality assurance included mounting political influence, commercialism in medical education, weak regulatory capacity of accrediting body, violation of rules, lack of valid accreditation standards and skilled inspectors. Conclusion: Quality assurance of Basic Medical Education in Pakistan involves various systemic, resource and personnel related challenges. The accrediting body needs to bring major reforms in its accreditation system and strengthen its regulatory and technical educational capacity to ensure the quality of medical education in nearly 168 medical and dental colleges of the country. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.2.1319 How to cite this:Khan AW, Sethi A, Wajid G, Yasmeen R . Challenges towards quality assurance of Basic Medical Education in Pakistan. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(2):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.2.1319 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.