Economics Education into Medical Professional Education — A Literature-Based Normative Curriculum Design Study
Objective: To examine how economics literacy can be systematically embedded into medical professional education in a low-cost, measurable, and sustainable way within an already near-saturated curriculum, and to build an operational curriculum integration model. Methods: The study conducted a literature-based normative curriculum design study. With Health Systems Science and constructive alignment as the analytic framework, the study synthesized international empirical cases and domestic policy texts, and derived the model through the progression “literacy positioning — curricular attribution — integration model.” Results: The study built a curriculum integration model with three components — embedding strategy, teaching organization, and evaluation. Economics content is embedded into existing courses through a longitudinal curricular thread, distributed spirally across three stages totaling 20–28 credit-hours. Teaching is organized around clinical decision problems and supported by clinical teachers working with health economists. A three-tier evaluation (knowledge, skill/behavior, reflection) secures the observability of the literacy. Conclusions: Economics literacy is a core literacy of the medical profession, not a managerial add-on; it supplies the economic dimension of the “humanities” within the medicine–humanities integration advanced by the New Medicine initiative. Its curricular intervention is best realized by embedding through a longitudinal thread, organizing teaching around clinical decisions, engaging health economists as collaborators, and securing observability through explicit, hierarchical evaluation.
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