Background: 

From 2024 the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) will introduce an obligatory accreditation process for global medical education institutions providing a medical curriculum in English language. At present, Central European Medical Schools in this category may not yet be fully eligible for accreditation by WFME. In particular, Human Anatomy course organizers from these medical schools are in need to develop their abilities to manage their excellent teaching work more effectively in multicultural and multilingual contexts of today, and to align it to global educational sustainability agendas (Sustainable Development Goal 4 on Quality of Higher Education – SDG4, Objective 1.1 of WHO Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030). A genuine and adequate needs analysis was prepared for this project and surveyed among all Central European anatomists in Hungary, Czech Republic and Croatia. The survey showed that over 70% of anatomists in this part of Europe know little about international quality standards of medical education, have never heard of the concept of student centered pedagogy or of assessment methods to measure the professional development of attitudes of their medical students or of themselves, and admit to know little about mental health management principles at the workplace despite many of them are doctors themselves. The reason for such a poor level of knowledge of academics about these topics relevant to their actual teaching context is that quality assurance at the systemic level is underdeveloped in Central European medical education in general. What are those components of
teaching traditions in anatomy which can not be eliminated without significant loss in quality or in prestige? Project participants exploring this question are leading anatomists from Central European medical schools (University of Pécs Hungary, Masaryk University Czech Republic, University of Zagreb Croatia) whose research will be augmented by world leading European anatomists (University of Cambridge UK) and educational developers from world leading medical schools (Karolinska Institutet Sweden). As the profile, experience and activities of the participating organisations are highly relevant for the field of the application, the results of this project may significantly help anatomists not only in Central Europe but also globally to deliver a sustainable, high quality, student centered anatomy teaching which is a highly timely expectation of the doctors of the future. Importantly, the project is suitable for creating synergies between different fields of educational experties: between centuries old teaching traditions of anatomists and student centered pedagogies of contemporary professional educational developers. The proposal is innovative, as it will create an online teachers training module accessible for any anatomists worldwide who are willing to adapt their teaching traditions to contemporary global developmental goals and standards (i.e. SDG4). The aims of the proposal are realistic as they are complementary to other initiatives of the participating organisations (CLILMED, EDUC). The proposal brings added value at EU level through results that would not be attained by activities carried out in a single country, as relevant legal frameworks, teaching traditions, perceptions and interpretations of global standards and concepts will be analysed in different cultural contexts of each participating countries.