The impact of Flexner's report on medical education in Sub-Saharan Africa Sudan as an example

Flexner’s Report 1910 is one of the most important and influential events in the history of medicine worldwide that led to the emergence of modern medical education. reforms of medical education took places as results of this report leading to the establishment of the biomedical model as the gold standard of medical training. Objectives: to identify the impact of Flexner's Report on Medical Education in Sub-Saharan Africa taking Sudan as an example more than 100 years after the report. The health system and medical education in Sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial era and after independence were studied. Conclusion: Medical education in Sub-Saharan Africa has not yet received a holistic review, reforms, and standardization and the health system needs more educational strategic planning. Multiple factors play a role in preventing the modernization of medical education in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as the poor economic status of these countries, inadequate infrastructure, equipment, and educational standards, large annual students intake, and lack of appropriately qualified teaching staff.

Adaptation and validation of the Arabic version of the COVID-19 anxiety scale

Background: Marked dysfunctional psychological consequences of COVID-19 necessitate an invention of new tailored scales that can assess and monitor these manifestations. Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) is new reliable and validated scale constructed to measure COVID-19-related anxiety. Objectives were to make a well-structured CAS Arabic version and to assess its validity. Methods: Sousa and Rojjanasriratw scale adaptation guidelines were followed for CAS translation to Arabic language and a survey of sociodemographic data, CAS and validated COVID-19 fear scale Arabic-version distributed to cross-sectional university students’ sample. Internal consistency, factor analysis, average variable extracted composite reliability, Pearson correlation, and mean differences were calculated. Results: 233 students responded to the survey, and 44.6% were female. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.94, item-total correlations 0.891-0.905 and inter-item correlations 0.722-0.805. The factor analysis test showed one factor that explains 80.76% of the cumulative variances, average variance extracted 0.80 and composite reliability 0.95, and the two scales’ correlation r-value was 0.472. No significant difference between the scales regarding the score means when compared. The independent t-test showed no differences in means within each identified sociodemographic group. Conclusions: The translated Arabic version of CAS has high internal consistency reliability and convergent validity values, and factor analysis addressed unidimensional measures. So, the Arabic CAS version is a reliable and valid version that maintains the original English scale reliability and validity properties.