A Tool for Evaluating Session-Level Integration in Medical Education

Integration in medical education is generally defined as a multidisciplinary approach to the delivery of the basic and applied sciences. In medical education, the number of integrated curricula reported has steadily increased, yet the degree of integration often varies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a tool for medical educators to assess and improve the level of trans-disciplinary integration within an individual academic session. The Session Integration Tool (SIT) is an analytic, developmental rubric that allows the user to assess session-level integration given three criteria: development, delivery, and outcomes. To evaluate the tool, participants utilized the SIT to assess two exemplar case studies, and then their own educational session. A survey was administered to assess user satisfaction along with the instrument's usefulness and impact on practice. Statistical analysis demonstrated a significant difference between user scores of the exemplar case studies for each paired set of criteria (p < 0.000) and for total scores (p = 0.043). Users also successfully used the instrument to assess their own session. The SIT was highly rated by users in terms of satisfaction, usefulness, and impact on practice, with average scores for each category ranging from agree to strongly agree. The SIT has statistical validity in its ability to discriminate between varied levels of integration. Users found the SIT to be useful and impactful for medical education practice and believe it to support peer- and self-assessment of curricular integration. The SIT is a useful, evidence-based, theory grounded tool for assessing session-level integration.