Comparing content coverage in medical curriculum to trainee-authored clinical notes.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Natural Language Processing
• Curriculum Evaluation

Background:

• Traditional medical curriculum evaluation relies on manual keyword entry and trainee logs, which can be subjective and incomplete.
• There is a need for objective and comprehensive methods to assess the alignment between medical curricula and actual clinical experiences.
• Evaluating clinical content coverage is crucial for ensuring trainees gain exposure to essential medical conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To employ natural language processing (NLP) to compare the clinical content of a medical curriculum with electronic medical record (EMR) notes.
• To assess the coverage of 25 core clinical problems (CCPs) and seven infectious disease categories within the curriculum and trainee notes.
• To identify discrepancies and areas of low content coverage in the medical curriculum.

Main Methods:

• Utilized natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze text from a four-year medical curriculum and trainee-generated EMR notes.
• Compared the frequency of 25 core clinical problems (CCPs) and seven infectious disease categories across both data sources.
• Quantified content coverage and identified specific areas of divergence between the curriculum and clinical practice.

Main Results:

• Most core clinical problems (CCPs) were represented in both the curriculum and trainee EMR notes.
• Lecture-based curricula demonstrated higher coverage of rare clinical conditions compared to trainee notes.
• Identified significant gaps in content coverage, predominantly concerning outpatient complaints and management.

Conclusions:

• Natural language processing (NLP) offers a robust method for evaluating medical curriculum content and trainee clinical exposure.
• The findings highlight specific areas within the medical curriculum that require revision, particularly for outpatient settings.
• This NLP-driven approach can inform future medical curriculum development and enhance educational program effectiveness.