Consensus recommendations on peripheral blood smear review: defining curricular standards and fellow competency

Graduate medical education training in hematology in North America is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). Trainees routinely review peripheral blood smears (PBS) in providing clinical care. Competency in PBS review at graduation is required by the ACGME. However, there are no consensus guidelines on best practices surrounding PBS review, education, or competency. We describe the generation of proposed theory and the consensus recommendations developed through a multi-institutional focus group, developed using constructivist grounded theory and a modified nominal group technique. Eight academic hematologists, spanning classical and malignant hematology, enrolled and participated in 2 one-hour focus groups. All routinely worked with fellows and half had formally instructed trainees on PBS interpretation. Focus group data were analyzed using mixed-methods techniques. Tenets of emerging theory were identified through inductive coding. Consensus recommendations (CR) were generated. Participants reviewed CR in an iterative fashion until consensus was reached. Strong consensus was reached on multiple aspects of PBS education. All agreed that trainees should learn PBS review through a systematic approach. Group discussion focused on disorders of red and white blood cells. The diagnoses of acute leukemia and thrombotic microangiopathies were most commonly discussed, with specific emphasis on disorders in which prompt recognition was required to avert significant patient morbidity. These CR offer external validity to future research and curricular development for both PBS review and other visuospatial tasks in medical education.