Perspectives on the New Curriculum
The Training Program Experience
By Mara B. Antonoff, M.D., Resident Medical Editor
The new thoracic surgery curriculum has arrived. Debuting this past summer, the curriculum resulted as a joint endeavor of several key organizations heavily vested in thoracic surgical education, with the aim of providing a web-based, multimedia repository of educational materials, accompanied by a formal structure and schedule of weekly topic coverage. Conceptually, the new curriculum has much to offer, with immense theoretical benefits to both the teacher and the student. But what about in practice? Now several months after its launch, the materials provided via the Moodle site and WebBrain have been accessed by the majority of training programs in this country.
How are these tools being utilized by the various programs, and what feedback do they have based on their experiences? The goal of this article will be to explore the various usage patterns of several institutions and their strategies for implementing the materials and integrating them with on-the-ground educational activities. Both the strengths and drawbacks from a programmatic standpoint will be addressed. As you read this article, perhaps you will be motivated to take another look at the curriculum, with new ideas as to how it might best suit your program’s needs.
At Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), the new curriculum was officially introduced to the trainees and faculty members in a very formal and organized manner, heavily employing the provided instructional videos to become quickly oriented to the new system ("How-To: Utilizing the Thoracic Surgery Brain WebBrain," by Dr. Craig Baker; "How-To: Navigating Moodle," by Dr. Ara Vaporciyan; and "Overview of Teaching Cardiothoracic Surgery" – all available from the Moodle site, https:// jctse.mrooms.net, under Resources on the right hand column). OHSU Program Coordinator Jill Rose reports that she also received helpful information about accessing the curriculum when she attended the "Educate the Educators" course in June, sponsored by the Joint Council on Thoracic Surgery Education (JCTSE). Ms. Rose states, "Faculty and learners enthusiastically adopted this new curriculum and immediately put it to use at least twice a week." When the weekly emails come out, the relevant articles and videos are sent to the trainees and faculty members in the form of a reminder email, including links to the online videos and all related PDF’s as attachments. The residents and fellows then engage in formal curriculum review sessions with faculty, students, and mid-level practitioners – covering the cardiac topics on Monday mornings and thoracic topics on Friday mornings.
At Loma Linda University Health, the residents meet with a faculty moderator on a weekly basis to cover the materials related to the weekly Thoracic Surgery Curriculum topics. The style of presentation is left to the discretion of the attending surgeon, with the majority of the didactic sessions following an oral-board, case-based scenario format. Rather than directly accessing the Moodle pages and WebBrain site, the majority of the faculty and trainees have found that they prefer to have the materials provided to them as hard copies. Consequently, these materials are downloaded and distributed by the program coordinator on a weekly basis.
As with any new educational program, there may be a need for adjustments in initial plans and utilization based on early experiences. For the first few months following release of the curriculum, the Loma Linda group aimed to cover two topics per week – cardiac on Monday mornings and thoracic on Thursday mornings. However, with a tremendous amount of material available for each topic, they ultimately decided to transition to a single weekly session.
While the Loma Linda program has attempted to adhere to the schedule according to the weekly curriculum emails, other programs have chosen to utilize the available materials within the framework of alternative curricular schedules. Rose Haselden, the program coordinator at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), explains that they created their own timeline for covering the materials, based on their specific needs and objectives.
Dr. John Ikonomidis, program director at MUSC, recalls being quick to adopt the new thoracic surgery curriculum. He states, "We were very impressed with its scope and current referencing. When it became available, we went through its entire corpus and divided it into sections which could be covered in 30 minutes. Then we developed a schedule where two topics (one adult or pediatric cardiac and one thoracic) would be covered in our weekly one-hour didactic sessions." Dr. Ikonomidis continues, "The residents are expected to read the material beforehand and faculty are assigned to quiz the residents during the session." In this way, the MUSC program has found a way to use the full breadth of materials, but tailoring the exact learning objectives for their trainees.
