Development of a longitudinal injury prevention curriculum for undergraduate medical students

Although injury is a major cause of death and disability, concepts of injury prevention have not been present in the curricula of most medical schools. There have been recent calls in the literature, including a 2005 report from the Association of American Medical Colleges, for the addition of injury prevention concepts into medical school education. This report describes the process of development of a longitudinal injury prevention curriculum in one medical school. The curriculum committee felt that adding the material in a longitudinal fashion would better correlate the material to the rest of the curriculum as well as provide efficiency in the already crowded undergraduate programme of study. The report describes the content of the longitudinal curriculum developed as well as initial evaluation of the material.