Addressing musculoskeletal curricular inadequacies within undergraduate medical education

Musculoskeletal (MSK) injuries and diseases place a significant burden on the health care system. Despite this, research indicates that physician training in the area of MSK medicine has historically been inadequate, with a majority of medical students feeling that their training in MSK medicine is lacking. The goal of this investigation was to evaluate the efficacy of a new preclinical MSK curriculum that was implemented within a nationally accredited allopathic medical program.

Retrospective analysis was completed on five consecutive years (2017-2021) of preclinical MSK curricular data for 549 medical students, including mid and end-of-course examinations and end-of-course student satisfaction surveys. Both parametric and non-parametric methods of analysis were used to examine within and between class differences (P < 0.05).

The new MSK curriculum covered 15 of 16 "core or must know" topics in MSK medicine, and academic performance was consistently high over the 5-year period of analysis (final course marks ranged from 76.6 ± 7.1 to 81.4 ± 8.1; failures/year: range from 0 to 4), being equal or above levels of student performance observed for other courses delivered during preclinical studies. Likert data from end-of-course surveys demonstrated that feedback was overwhelmingly positive (overall course satisfaction ranged from a low of 3.07/4.00 to a high of 3.56/4.00) and indicated that students felt that the new preclinical MSK curriculum did effectively support medical student learning and knowledge retention.

Results are expected to help advance the current body of knowledge that is dedicated to improving physician learning and knowledge retention in the area of MSK medicine and provides a curricular model that could be used by other nationally accredited medical programs to help enhance MSK learning at the preclinical levels of physician training.