Teaching medical informatics a la carte: a curriculum for the professional palate

Health professionals as well as students vary greatly in their appetite for medical informatics and evidence-based medicine. The information professional is challenged by the need for instructional programs that support the use of medical informatics to a diverse audience. For teaching programs to be successfully received, the information professional must be able to offer an adaptable curriculum that can be arranged to meet the differing needs of a wide range of health professionals. The Educational Services Department at New York University Medical Center has designed and implemented a multidisciplinary curriculum that serves as a model for health and information professionals to meet a variety of goals and objectives. This paper describes how the curriculum evolved. It is presented as a menu of offerings that may be coordinated and adapted to meet the varying skills and needs of clinicians, basic scientists, residency training programs, medical student clerkships, and nursing and allied health programs. Informatics programs that may include workshops in basic computer skills, identification of information resources, the structure of information, developing search strategies in support of evidence-based medicine, identifying qualitative journal literature, and critical appraisal of the literature, are easily adapted to any audience and schedule.