Early experience with implementing the UM-MHPE indicates that EPAs and competencies can provide a viable alternative to traditional courses and a vehicle for rigorous assessment. A high level of individualisation is feasible but carries with it significant costs and makes intentional community building essential. Most significantly, abandoning a time-based framework is a difficult innovation to implement in a university structure that is predicated on time-based education.
Phenomenon: Reproductive justice (RJ) is defined by women of color advocates as the right to have children, not have children and parent children while maintaining reproductive autonomy. In the United States, physicians have been complicit in multiple historical reproductive injustices, involving coercive sterilization of thousands of people of color, low income, and disabilities. Currently, reproductive injustices continue to occur; however, physicians have no formal RJ medical education to address injustices. The objective of this study was to engage leading advocates within the movement using a Delphi method to identify critical components for such a curriculum. Approach: In 2016, we invited 65 RJ advocates and leaders to participate in an expert panel to design RJ medical education. A 3-round Delphi survey was distributed electronically to identify content for inclusion in an RJ curriculum. In the next 2 survey rounds, experts offered feedback and revisions and rated agreement with including content recommendations in the final curriculum. We calculated descriptive statistics to analyze quantitative data. A team with educational expertise wrote learning outcomes based on expert content recommendations. Findings: Of the 65 RJ advocates and leaders invited, 41 participated on the expert panel of the Delphi survey. In the first survey, the expert panel recommended 58 RJ content areas through open-ended response. Over the next 2 rounds, there was consensus among the panel to include 52 of 58 of these areas in the curriculum. Recommended content fell into 11 broad domains: access, disparities, and structural competency; advocacy; approaches to reproductive healthcare; contemporary law and policy; cultural safety; historical injustices; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and intersex health; oppression, power, and bias training; patient care; reproductive health; and RJ definitions. The 97 learning outcomes created from this process represented both unique and existing educational elements. Insights: A collaborative methodology infused with RJ values can bridge experts in advocacy and academics. New learning outcomes identified through this process can enhance medical education; however, it is just as important to consider education in RJ approaches to care as it is knowledge about that care. We must explore the pedagogic process of RJ medical education while considering that expertise in this area may exist outside of the medical community and thus there is a need to partner with RJ advocates. Finally, we expect to use innovative teaching methods to transform medical education and achieve an RJ focus.
The safe prescribing, use, administration, and monitoring of medications are an important component of patient safety efforts and are of particular importance to the obstetrician/gynecologist. Safe use of medications requires a team-based approach focused on medication safety with effective 2-way communication, use of technology to prevent and identify errors, diligent monitoring of the medication's effects on the patient, and use of standardized protocols to decrease the likelihood of a medication error.
RCA approach in health care is grounded in practice and can be easily adapted for assessment. Because this is a novel use of RCA, there are opportunities to expand beyond the authors' initial approach for using this in assessment.
Background
Promotion for academic faculty depends on a variety of factors, including their research, publications, national leadership, and quality of their teaching.
Objective
We sought to determine the importance of resident evaluations of faculty for promotion in obstetrics-gynecology programs.
Methods
A 28-item questionnaire was developed and distributed to 185 department chairs of US obstetrics-gynecology residency programs.
Results
Fifty percent (93 of 185) responded, with 40% (37 of 93) stating that teaching has become more important for promotion in the past 10 years. When faculty are being considered for promotion, teaching evaluations were deemed “very important” 60% of the time for clinician track faculty but were rated as mainly “not important” or “not applicable” for research faculty. Sixteen respondents (17%) stated a faculty member had failed to achieve promotion in the past 5 years because of poor teaching evaluations. Positive teaching evaluations outweighed low publication numbers for clinical faculty 24% of the time, compared with 5% for research faculty and 8% for tenured faculty being considered for promotion. The most common reason for rejection for promotion in all tracks was the number of publications. Awards for excellence in teaching improved chances of promotion.
Conclusions
Teaching quality is becoming more important in academic obstetrics-gynecology departments, especially for clinical faculty. Although in most institutions promotion is not achieved without adequate research and publications, the importance of teaching excellence is obvious, with 1 of 6 (17%) departments reporting a promotion had been denied due to poor teaching evaluations.
This work investigates whether enrolling in a MassiveOpen Online Course (MOOC) with friends or colleagues can improve a learner's performance and social interaction during the course. Our results suggest that signing up for a MOOC with peers correlates positively with the rate of course completion, level of achievement, and discussion forum usage. Further analysis seems to suggest that a learner's interaction with their friends compliments a MOOC by acting as a form of self-blended learning.
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