Perspectives of medical students and teaching faculty on teaching medicine in their native language

Background: One of the basic policy questions to be decided at the inception of medical education institutes is the language of instruction. Aims: This study explored the perspectives of medical faculty and students at a college in Saudi Arabia on the language of instruction in medical education. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of undergraduate medical students and full-time faculty members at a medical college in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was conducted in 2016. Each participant completed a self-administered, validated 28-item questionnaire. Results: The total number of students and faculty who responded were 468 (76%) and 37 (93%) respectively. Most students and faculty members agreed that studying in English enables a better access to medical information (n=457, 91%) and more job opportunities (n=419, 83%). Less than 15% of the students preferred to be taught in Arabic in most of the curriculum aspects except for communication skills (n=131, 28%) and the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) (n=119, 26%). Conclusions: Most medical students and faculty members preferred English as the language of instruction for medical education and did not believe that teaching medicine in Arabic should be sought as a future goal.