A program to teach curriculum development to junior faculty

Background and Objectives: Even though curriculum skills are widely acknowl edged to be an important part of faculty development in family medicine, re ports of outcomes of programs that teach those skills are rarely found in t he medical education literature. The Curriculum Workshop Series, one part o f a 1-year faculty development fellowship for recent residency graduates, w as designed to teach curriculum skills to junior faculty. The Program: Deve loped as part of the Harbor-UCLA Family Medicine Faculty Development Fellow ship, the Curriculum Workshop Series consisted of monthly or twice-monthly group sessions, readings, discussion, and individual projects with feedback from colleagues and the instructor. Objectives included developing an unde rstanding of six fundamental steps of curriculum development, completion of an individual project, and giving and receiving feedback regarding project s. Outcome measures included number of projects implemented, the quality of projects, and participant satisfaction. Outcomes: Eight fellows participat ed in the Curriculum Workshop Series and completed projects. Six of eight w ere implemented, providing three new curricular opportunities and three enh ancements to existing curricula for three family practice residency program s. Review of projects by outside experts showed that a majority of the six steps were addressed by most fellows but that more emphasis needed to be pl aced on the clarity of the written curriculum, the link between teaching st rategies and specific learning objectives, and evaluation of learners and p rojects. Participants endorsed the relevance of curriculum skills, the prac tice step-by-step approach to curriculum development, and the opportunity t o produce and implement an individual project. Conclusions: The Curriculum Workshop Series provides a straightforward format for teaching curriculum s kills to junior faculty and demonstrates that recent graduates have the abi lity to make a contribution in the area of curriculum development. The form at presented here could readily be adapted to other faculty development set tings. Long-term outcomes of this type of faculty development remain to be studied.