Experience of Delphi technique in the process of establishing consensus on core competencies

The Department of Community Medicine and Family Medicine (CMFM) has been started as a new model for imparting the components of family medicine and delivering health-care services at primary and secondary levels in all six newly established All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), but there is no competency-based curriculum for it. The paper aims to share the experience of Delphi method in the process of developing consensus on core competencies of the new model of CMFM in AIIMS for undergraduate medical students in India.

The study adopted different approaches and methods, but Delphi was the most critical method used in this research. In Delphi, the experts were contacted by e-mail and their feedback on the same was analyzed.

Two rounds of Delphi were conducted in which 150 participants were contacted in Delphi-I but only 46 responded. In Delphi-II, 26 participants responded whose responses were finally considered for analysis. Three of the core competencies namely clinician, primary-care physician, and professionalism were agreed by all the participants, and the least agreement was observed in the competencies of epidemiologist and medical teacher. The experts having more experience were less consistent as responses were changed from agree to disagree in more than 15% of participants and 6% changed from disagree to agree.

Within the given constraints, the final list of competencies and skills for the discipline of CMFM compiled after the Delphi process will provide a useful insight into the development of competency-based curriculum of the subject.