A Novel Core Competencies-Based Academic Medicine Curriculum: Description and Preliminary Results

Physicians practice health care in a rapidly changing system that requires more than the delivery of safe and effective care. Modern physicians must also acquire skills beyond direct patient care. Residency programs must, therefore, prepare physicians to meet these demands by providing appropriate education and training.

We designed, implemented and assessed an academic medicine curriculum in the first post-graduate year. This curriculum provides comprehensive exposure to necessary non-patient contact related physician skills. Topics centered around four domains: critical appraisal of literature of literature, quality improvement, professional development, and teaching. Each of these domains is linked to the six core competencies established by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education's (ACGME). Instruction includes small-group learning sessions with additional time for self-directed online modules and a faculty-mentored quality improvement research project that is presented at a graduation symposium. All residents completed a survey evaluation of the curriculum before and after the course via open-ended questions and Likert responses (0-5). We assessed improvement in resident confidence with each curricular domain using mean Likert score change and 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Residents improved at all curricular domains measured. The most significant mean changes included confidence in: poster presentations (2.7; 95% CI: 1.9-3.5), plan-do-check-act cycle (2.5; 95% CI: 2.1-2.9), quality improvement projects (2.4; 95% CI: 1.9-2.9), and abstract presentation (2.3; 95% CI: 1.6-3.0).

We found that the academic medicine rotation (AMR) is feasible in a large academic setting. Furthermore, the AMR allows early exposure to and improvement in essential non-patient contact related physician skills required by the ACGME core competencies and assessed through the milestones.