Curriculum & Classroom Material Development
Through my work in helping develop written materials and designing curricula, I have been fortunate to interact and connect with colleagues across Canada who share my enthusiasm for paediatric education. This has created opportunities for involvement in subsequent collaborative projects that I am richer for having been involved in.
OSCE Review Course
As discussed, I developed the curriculum for a review session in part, designed to assist medical student interns in studying for their formative Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) at the end of paediatric clerkship. Over the four years that I led these review sessions, however, I had the opportunity to continually develop the curriculum to encompass a fairly thorough list of paediatric clinical problems and their associated disorders, while updating session material based on new literature and clinical guidelines. This material was distributed to students following the session, and would contain outlines of our discussions, with clear organization into elements of the clinical approach (e.g. history taking), as well as answers to common questions parents might ask a paediatrician with respect to the problem, which we often acted out in role play as part of the actual session. As a paediatric trainee at the time, creation of these overviews and their subsequent delivery helped me in my clinical training, and forced me to gain a level of mastery of the material such that I could comfortably summarize the key elements of clinical practice with respect to a given concern. It is satisfying to still get requests for these notes from former students who wish to use them as a template for studies outside of the paediatric clerkship.
Examples of some of these notes can be found by selecting the links below. 19 station outlines were created in total.
Paediatric Textbook Chapters
As discussed, I was fortunate to serve as a mentor for students and residents engaged in two significant collaborative projects for Canadian texts reviewing paediatric diseases and clinical scenarios, In this advisory role, I was able to help students locate appropriate resources, clarify recommendations and clinical questions, and suggest take-home messages worthy of inclusion. However, I was also actively engaged in writing and editing this work as a co-authour of nearly all topics discussed in the Edmonton Manual of Common Clincal Scenarios, and a fair number of those covered in Essentials for the Canadian Medical Licensing Exam: Review and Prep for MCCQE Part I (2nd Edition). Prior to my work on the 2nd edition of the latter, I collaborated with Drs. Melanie Lewis, Peter Gill, and Lauren Kitney in extensively revising the 1st edition based on feedback received.
Both texts have been designed as study aids for Canadian or other medical students, but have been used by international medical graduates and residents alike. Each also has specific goals in mind. The Edmonton Manual has been designed as a study aid for medical students preparing for OSCEs (objective structured clinical examinations), which are commonly challenged by Canadian medical students at both preclinical and clerkship levels of training. It is presented as a series of scenarios with easy to follow, two-page approaches, summarizing essential elements of history taking and physical examination, in addition to providing relevant workup and management of common diagnoses. Essentials for the Canadian Medical Licensing Exam, on the other hand, is designed as a review curriculum for those studying for the MCCQE (Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination) Part I, which is an online examination that tests fundamental medical knowledge as well as clinical reasoning.
Residency Academic Half-Day Curriculum
When I entered the paediatric residency program, there was low resident satisfaction with and attendance of the paediatric academic half-day. Motivated to assist, I volunteered as a first year resident representative on the AHD committee, and continued to serve as a representative of my yearly cohort for the duration of the four-year program.
Through my work with this group, Dr. Mia Lang (Program Director) and myself spearheaded an initiative to create a formal academic half-day curriculum outline for the 2-year cycle of academic half-days. We divided the subspecialties amongst committee members to broaden the collaborative effort. Additionally, based on my suggestion, we created themed academic half-days, in order to encourage residents to read in advance in a more specific or focused area. It was also felt that the themed academic half-days could allow lecturers to build on material over the course of the 4 hours, with more autonomy for lecturers to design schedules that did not require rigid adherence to the formerly held 50-minute per session format. It was also encouraged that each member designate which CanMEDS core competencies could be addressed by each topic, and potentially where allied health professionals could serve as collaborators in guest lectures.
This was well-received by the residents, and attendance had clearly improved within a few years of instituting this new outline. Examples of themed academic half-day outlines that I had developed can be found below.
Digital Curation of Paediatric Guideline/Position Statements
During residency, I realized the importance of understanding the Canadian Paediatic Society position statements and practice points, which were not only clinically relevant, but contained material that was emphasized on Royal College certification examinations. By the time I had completed first year residency, however, there were around 200 published, and so getting a grasp of the vast amount of material within them seemed like a daunting task.
In response to this concern, I created an asynchronous, informal learning program with recruitment of volunteer participants from our residency group. I assigned several of the statements to each learner, and each week, one of us was responsible for creating a series of short answer questions and corresponding answer keys to summarize 1 or 2 of these statements. Each week, these question and answer formats were posted to our wiki site, and other learners in the group would then be able to work through the questions and answers as a review at their own pace, after having read the statements. Over the next several months, approximately 50 statements had been summarized in this fashion, with very high completion rate by participants. This digital curation project became accessible to all residents, who could use the answer keys as summaries of the position statements and practice points for future reference or as a study aid.
Select the button below to view some of the summaries created:
Future Project: NASPGHAN Fellows Concise Review, 2nd edition
This review book was originally developed as an up-to-date and comprehensive review to assist North American paediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition fellows and faculty in preparing for certifying examinations. Through my work as a fellow representative of the NASPGHAN (North American Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition) Professional Education Committee, I was selected to liaise with editors in chief to coordinate the effort to revise and create the second edition of this text. Commitment is expected to be ongoing throughout the course of 2015.