Curriculum Enrichment Across the Medical Education Continuum Using e-Delphi and the Community Priority Index.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Curriculum Development
• Health Professions Education

Background:

• Medical curricula require continuous enrichment to meet evolving healthcare demands.
• Identifying learner priorities is crucial for effective curriculum design.
• Existing methods for curriculum prioritization can be time-consuming and lack consensus.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the application of the e-Delphi technique integrated with the Community Priority Index (CPI) for medical curriculum enrichment.
• To identify and prioritize key topics for diverse learner groups within a medical education setting.

Main Methods:

• A mixed-methods study utilizing a nominal group technique to generate an initial topic list.
• An e-Delphi survey administered to healthcare experts (N=40) across four cohorts: postbaccalaureate premedical scholars, medical students, clinical fellows, and junior faculty.
• The Community Priority Index (CPI) was employed for multicriteria decision-making and calculating standardized prioritization scores with confidence intervals.

Main Results:

• The e-Delphi-CPI system identified leadership skills and competence as the highest-ranked topic for postbaccalaureate premedical scholars, medical students, and clinical fellows.
• Introductory research methods emerged as the top-ranked topic for junior faculty.
• Leadership skills, research methods, and practical issues in health disparity were consistently ranked among the top priorities across multiple cohorts.

Conclusions:

• The integrated e-Delphi-CPI system successfully identified high-priority topics and enabled comparability across different learner cohorts.
• This system offers a robust and efficient method for advancing medical curriculum enrichment processes.
• The findings highlight the importance of leadership and research skills in medical education.