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A Multi-Institution Collaboration to Define Core Content and Design Flexible Curricular Components for a Foundational Medical School Course: Implications for National Curriculum Reform.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Chen, SF; Deitz, J; Batten, JN; DeCoste-Lopez, J; Adam, M; Alspaugh, JA; Amieva, MR; Becker, P; Boslett, B; Carline, J; Chin-Hong, P; Smith, S ...
Published in: Acad Med
June 2019

Medical educators have not reached widespread agreement on core content for a U.S. medical school curriculum. As a first step toward addressing this, five U.S. medical schools formed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Reimagining Medical Education collaborative to define, create, implement, and freely share core content for a foundational medical school course on microbiology and immunology. This proof-of-concept project involved delivery of core content to preclinical medical students through online videos and class-time interactions between students and facilitators. A flexible, modular design allowed four of the medical schools to successfully implement the content modules in diverse curricular settings. Compared with the prior year, student satisfaction ratings after implementation were comparable or showed a statistically significant improvement. Students who took this course at a time point in their training similar to when the USMLE Step 1 reference group took Step 1 earned equivalent scores on National Board of Medical Examiners-Customized Assessment Services microbiology exam items. Exam scores for three schools ranged from 0.82 to 0.84, compared with 0.81 for the national reference group; exam scores were 0.70 at the fourth school, where students took the exam in their first quarter, two years earlier than the reference group. This project demonstrates that core content for a foundational medical school course can be defined, created, and used by multiple medical schools without compromising student satisfaction or knowledge. This project offers one approach to collaboratively defining core content and designing curricular resources for preclinical medical school education that can be shared.

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Published In

Acad Med

DOI

EISSN

1938-808X

Publication Date

June 2019

Volume

94

Issue

6

Start / End Page

819 / 825

Location

United States

Related Subject Headings

  • Videotape Recording
  • United States
  • Students, Medical
  • Schools, Medical
  • Personal Satisfaction
  • Microbiology
  • Interdisciplinary Placement
  • Humans
  • General & Internal Medicine
  • Educational Measurement
 

Citation

APA
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MLA
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Chen, S. F., Deitz, J., Batten, J. N., DeCoste-Lopez, J., Adam, M., Alspaugh, J. A., … Prober, C. G. (2019). A Multi-Institution Collaboration to Define Core Content and Design Flexible Curricular Components for a Foundational Medical School Course: Implications for National Curriculum Reform. Acad Med, 94(6), 819–825. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000002663
Chen, Sharon F., Jennifer Deitz, Jason N. Batten, Jennifer DeCoste-Lopez, Maya Adam, J Andrew Alspaugh, Manuel R. Amieva, et al. “A Multi-Institution Collaboration to Define Core Content and Design Flexible Curricular Components for a Foundational Medical School Course: Implications for National Curriculum Reform.Acad Med 94, no. 6 (June 2019): 819–25. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000002663.
Chen SF, Deitz J, Batten JN, DeCoste-Lopez J, Adam M, Alspaugh JA, Amieva MR, Becker P, Boslett B, Carline J, Chin-Hong P, Engle DL, Hayward KN, Nevins A, Porwal A, Pottinger PS, Schwartz BS, Smith S, Sow M, Teherani A, Prober CG. A Multi-Institution Collaboration to Define Core Content and Design Flexible Curricular Components for a Foundational Medical School Course: Implications for National Curriculum Reform. Acad Med. 2019 Jun;94(6):819–825.

Published In

Acad Med

DOI

EISSN

1938-808X

Publication Date

June 2019

Volume

94

Issue

6

Start / End Page

819 / 825

Location

United States

Related Subject Headings

  • Videotape Recording
  • United States
  • Students, Medical
  • Schools, Medical
  • Personal Satisfaction
  • Microbiology
  • Interdisciplinary Placement
  • Humans
  • General & Internal Medicine
  • Educational Measurement