Abstract
Background & Purpose
It is assumed that after adopting competencies based curriculum the medical education has changed tremendously, however it needs more researches to assess the impact of this curriculum. Nevertheless, An important part of the success of a competency-based curriculum is that all stakeholders are aware of the competencies and rationale behind them. As of now there are only a few studies, which have addressed understanding of competencies among medical students especially in non-western medical schools. Therefore, we designed this survey to assess the understanding in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Methods
A cross sectional survey was designed based on questionnaire developed by Delphi technique. The questionnaire focussed to assess the perception about understanding of competencies (mainly the CanMEDS competencies) based on a five-point Likert rating scale. The college of medicine has adopted a problem-based learning curriculum from Groningen University, Netherlands in 2012. At present the college has two parallel curriculums, with the old curriculum being followed by previous students ( 4th and 5th years having traditional subject-based learning curriculum)and the newer students following the new PBL curriculum with effect from year 2012.
Results
The results showed that selected competencies were similar for both males and females groups as well as PBL and SBL and didn’t find statistical significant difference (>0.05). However less number has strongly agreed that they are competent enough to portray all competencies from both gender and curricula. The reasons raised as to why there was no adequate understanding about competencies by PBL students included: no clear understandings of objectives, lack of training of staff, first year of study, high school does not produce competent students and language (English) problems.
Conclusion
The results showed no significant difference in students following PBL or SBL with regard to understanding of competencies. However in PBL, students are in their earlier years and understand competencies that are required from them superior from SBL students.

Key words: Competencies; PBL; Competencies based curriculum