Surgeons as Educators A Guide for Academic Development and Teaching Excellence

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Level 1 The resident demonstrates milestones expected of an incoming resident

Level 2 The resident is advancing and demonstrates additional milestones

Level 3 The resident continues to advance and demonstrate additional milestones; the

resident demonstrates the majority of milestones targeted for residency in this

sub-competency

Level 4 The resident has advanced so that he or she now substantially demonstrates the

milestones targeted for residency. This level is designed as the graduation target

Level 5 The resident has advanced beyond performance targets set for residency and is

demonstrating “aspirational” goals which might describe the performance of

someone who has been in practice for several years. It is expected that only a few

exceptional residents will reach this level

While this pertains to the national urology curriculum, it can be applied to any
proposed program or curriculum being assessed.
The first step starts with the identification and analysis of a health-care need or other
problem that is to be addressed by the curriculum. A clear definition of the problem
helps to focus a curriculum’s goals and objectives which in turn will focus on the cur-
riculum’s educational and evaluation strategies. Clarification of the health- care prob-
lem to be addressed and the current and ideal approaches to addressing the problem is
required to focus the education intervention toward solving the problem. Conclusions
from this step may or may not apply to a particular group of learners so the next step is
to perform an explicit assessment of the specific needs of the targeted learners.

Targeted Needs Assessment

It is critical that the curriculum be pertinent to the specific learner, and so it is
important to identify and clearly define the learner. A medical student will have very
separate educational needs compared to a junior resident, and similarly the junior
resident needs are unique from the senior resident or fellow in training. Postgraduate
clinicians and surgeons will also have very discrete educational needs that are rele-
vant to their clinical practice. At times, especially as the result of rapidly advancing
technologies and new techniques in surgery, there may be overlap of learner groups
such that resident and postgraduate learners have similar educational needs as has
been seen with introduction of laparoscopic and robot-assisted laparoscopic sur-
gery. However, each learner group should be considered separately and a curricu-
lum devised that meets each unique need of the specific group.
Methods for performing learner needs assessment include:

• Informal discussions/formal interviews


• Focus group discussions


• Questionnaires


• Direct observation of skills


• Examinations


• Audits of current performance


• Strategic planning session

3 Curriculum Development