Prospective analysis of a novel orthopedic residency advocacy education program

Future physician leaders must be able to critically assess health care policy and patient advocacy issues. Currently, no nationally accepted, standardized curriculum to provide advocacy education during orthopedic residency training exists. We therefore developed an "Advocacy" curriculum for our orthopedic residents designed to direct particular attention to patient advocacy, specialty advocacy, and healthcare policy.

Residents were given pre- and post-curriculum questionnaires to gauge their perception of the importance, strengths, and weaknesses of this curriculum. A paired t-test was used to compare pre- and post-curriculum responses.

Twenty-one of 24 orthopedic residents completed the pre-curriculum and post-curriculum questionnaire regarding the importance of advocacy education (87.5% response rate). Overall, 85.7% (18/21) of responders ranked the curriculum on orthopedic advocacy as good or excellent. Prior to the advocacy curriculum, 33.3% (7/21) of residents felt that learning about orthopedic advocacy was important to their education, while following the curriculum 100% (21/21) felt so (p<0.05). The percentage of residents who considered health policy to be important increased from 71.4% (15/21) to 95.2% (20/21) following the curriculum(p<0.05). Following the advocacy curriculum, 90.5% (19/21) of responders would be interested in getting involved in orthopedic advocacy.

This curriculum significantly increased residents' belief in the importance of advocacy issues. Following the curriculum, 100% of responding residents considered orthopedic advocacy education as important. An advocacy curriculum may serve as an integral preparatory educational core component to residency training.