Assessment of behavioural objectives in anaesthesia resident training

Residency training must be based on a comprehensive curriculum. Educators use the term behavioural objectives to represent educational objectives stated as behaviours that must be accomplished by the students. Educational objectives represent an important part of the curriculum content. However, curriculum content, as defined in large academic departments, has often been described as irrelevant for practitioners outside these large centres. Behavioural objectives drawn for the year of internal medicine, the fourth year of a five-year specialty programme in anaesthesia, were evaluated for their clinical relevance for anaesthetists in clinical practice outside cities where teaching programmes are found in the province of Québec. A questionnaire based on 288 objectives, using a rating scale, was used to compare the opinions of the members of the Education Committee (6) and outside practitioners (24). There were no significant differences between the mean ratings of the two groups of raters on ten of the 14 groups of objectives. A concordance of opinion was also present when there was disagreement with the importance of certain objectives. There was disagreement with only one group (VIII) of objectives on 14. Within this group there was agreement with the clinically oriented objectives and disagreement with the laboratory oriented objectives. Objectives that were related to the acute aspects of illness were rated higher than those related to their chronic aspects. The outside practitioners made 81 suggestions or comments about the objectives.