Hospice and palliative care (HPC) education is an essential component of undergraduate medical education. Since February 4th, 2018, withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment at the end of life (EOL) has been permitted in Korea as put forth by law, the "Act on Hospice and Palliative Care and Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment for Patients at the End of Life." Therefore, Korean medical schools have faced a challenge in providing comprehensive HPC education in order to better prepare medical students to be competent physicians in fulfilling their role in caring for patients at the EOL. There have been considerable variations in the evolution and organization of HPC education across Korean medical schools for the past 20 years. In 2016, all medical schools taught HPC curriculum as a separate course or integrated courses, with the most frequently taught topics including: delivering bad news, pain management, and the concept of palliative medicine. However, the content, time allocation, learning format, and clinical skills practice training of HPC education have been insufficient, inconsistent, and diverse. For this reason, we propose a HPC curriculum containing seven domains with 60 learning objectives in a course duration of over 20 hours based on the Palliative Education Assessment Tool (PEAT) as standard HPC curriculum. Furthermore, we recommend development of a national curriculum for HPC/EOL care education to be organized by the HPC board and managed under the accreditation criteria of the Korea Institute of Medical Education and Evaluation.

The aim of modern medicine is to prolong life by fighting death. Doctors have traditionally believed that this was an ethical good deed. The negative connotation surrounding death has led to the avoidance of terminally ill patients. But in a modern society where death is medicalized, doctors have to see dying patients every day and are in a state of guilt from implementing meaningless life-sustaining treatments. Therefore, medical schools should allow medical students to embrace a new perspective through death education. Yonsei University Medical College has implemented death education since 2017 as an optional class for first and second year medical students. Students watch videos related to death once a week for 6 weeks and submit their reflections by e-mail. The professor reads the students' reflections and gives them weekly feedback. Through this coursework, students realize that death is not a medical event, but rather a part of life and completion. The ultimate purpose of death education is to transform blind life-absolutist identity into narrative identity.

Medical treatments as universal care have been turning into delivering medical technology. Coping with death, which is prevalent in all medical circumstances, without comprehensive understanding results in missing out on significant aspects between life and death. This makes doctors surrender easily to a conventional and binary division of life and death and reduces the chance of including death as a part of the medical realm. Furthermore, in terms of medical education, we need to have the opportunity to consider such subjects that can benefit from special planning and consideration. Through reviewing articles in a variety of disciplines such as medicine, philosophy, psychology, literature, and anthropology, we can better understand death, condolences, and the relevance between them in a contextual way. In order to seek a better approach, this study also aims to survey and review the recent state of death education in diverse fields of medicine in Korea. In conclusion, if it is complicated for us to explain or understand death in general, focusing on condolences as a human response to death could be one meaningful way that deserves contemplation. It is possible to regard condolences as a touchstone and a prerequisite in death education itself.

Medical humanities education (MHE) is as essential as basic medical sciences and clinical medicine education. Despite the importance of MHE, MHE curriculum development (CD) has proven to be challenging. This critical review examines the MHE CD at one medical school. The critical review methodology was developed based on Kern's six step CD model to systematically examine the CD of "Doctoring and Medical Humanities (DMH)" at the Yonsei University College of Medicine. Five review questions were developed related to (1) necessity, (2) direction and purpose, (3) design, (4) operation, and (5) evaluation of CD based on Kern's model. The review showed that the process of DMH CD mapped to components of Kern's model. The DMH curriculum content selected was closely related to medical practice and aimed to combine the acquisition of understanding and skills by designing a student-participatory curriculum based on clinical cases. Assessment methods that emphasized students' reflections were actively introduced in the evaluation section. Since the regular committee for DMH continued the work of the special ad hoc committees for DMH CD, the CD was effectively completed. However, the planning and evaluation functions and responsibilities of the DMH committee need to be strengthened. Despite the apparent limitations, the fact that students showed a high satisfaction rate and preferred small group discussions based on clinical cases has significant implications in the instructional design of MHE, where changes in self-awareness and attitude are more important than the acquisition of information. It is necessary to systematically review and study students' reflection results produced by the changed assessment methods and to develop assessment indicators for MHE that reflect the achievements of the MHE competencies of students.

The goal of this study is to present efficient measures to improve the quality of medical education through using a developed and applied continuous quality improvement (CQI) model suitable for medical education. To achieve this purpose, we developed a theoretical CQI model through a review of the literature according to the design-based research method. Through repetitive productive cyclical processes and professional reviews, we finally deduced an appropriate CQI model for medical education. The most important results of this study are as follows: First, the CQI model for medical education is defined as a quality management system with a cyclical course of planning, implementation, evaluation, and improvement of medical education. Second, the CQI model for medical education is composed of quality management activities of educational design, work, and evaluation. In addition, each activity has the implementation strategies of planning, doing, checking, and improving based on the PDCA model (Plan-Do-Check-Act model). Third, the CQI model for medical school education is composed of committees related to medical education doing improvement activities, as well as planning, implementing and evaluating it with CQI. As a result, we can improve teaching by using the CQI model for medical education. It is more meaningful because this gives us organized and practical measures of quality management and improvement in medical education as well as in the educational process.

This study aimed to identify needed improvements to current evaluation methods in medical school computer-based test (CBT) programs and test environments. To that end, an analysis of the importance and satisfaction was conducted through a survey of 3rd and 4th year medical students who had sufficient experience with CBT programs. Importance performance analysis methodology using the correlation coefficient was applied to assess average satisfaction and importance. The first quadrant (keep up the good work) was a factor of review and time management and test facilities among the conveniences of the CBT program. The second quadrant (concentrate here) was a factor of the convenience of the CBT program and computer monitor and chair factor within the test facilities. The third quadrant (low priority) was a factor of cheating and computer failure. The fourth quadrant (possible overkill) was the location, spacing, and temperature factors of the test facilities. Improvements are needed to reduce 'eye fatigue' and help students focus and understand the questions in the CBT programs. It is necessary to improve computer monitors, desks and chairs, and consider the subject's body type and manager in order to cope with computer breakdown and peripheral failures. Spare computers are needed. These findings are meaningful in that they have been able to identify factors that require improvement in the CBT program and test environment resulting from changes in assessment tools.