Curriculum Makeover: How to Modernize and Streamline Your Didactics

Clerkship and subinternship leaders face the eternal challenge of finding the optimal balance between teaching curriculum material through didactic sessions versus experiential learning on the wards. Educators hope that didactic sessions are a valuable use of learner time, preparing them to best take care of their patients and for national exams. Leaders also aim for an equivalent educational experience for learners at different clerkship sites with exposure to different patient populations, medical diagnoses, and preceptors with varying areas of expertise. Some sites may lack experts in a certain topic area, such as point-of-care ultrasound, and may rely on didactic teaching or simulation to cover that material. Material used in didactic sessions may be recycled from years prior and show evidence of racial or gender bias that goes unnoticed. In this workshop, presenters will guide participants through step-by-step directions on how to evaluate their current curriculum offerings and adjust them to meet the national guidelines. Participants will be shown an example curriculum from a workshop presenter's institution and be lead through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. In separate breakout groups for clerkship and subinternship leaders, participants will begin to identify strengths and weaknesses in their current didactic curriculum, a process they can continue at their home institution. Presenters will provide resources to mitigate bias in their curriculum. Participants will also be able to crowdsource how to best meet the needs of their students in areas of deficit in their curriculum.