Background: Residency training includes learning to be an educator; however, it can be difficult for residents to feel comfortable and empowered to teach. Further, it has been established that the current generation of learners prefers an environment that incorporates a sense of community while providing competitive challenges.
Purpose: Our goal was to establish a program that promoted teaching while engaging in the learning style of our residents.
Description: Each four week rotation was assigned a focused study of medicine—Cardiology, for example. Residents were charged with educating their rotation’s team on major learning topics within that subspecialty. At the culmination of the block, all resident teams would gather for a competition comprised of board review questions covering the assigned subspecialty. The teams answered each question before it was answered by a competing group of attending physicians. The attending physicians would go over content of the question as well as test taking strategy.
Conclusions: Participation in this initiative has been nearly 100 percent since its creation and we have even expanded to include specialty service teams. Further, an anonymous survey distributed to the participants revealed that all of those polled would like to see its continuance. After completing the curriculum, the majority of residents felt more comfortable teaching, reported knowing the topic material better and plan to spend more time teaching in the future. Further, our American Board of Internal Medicine board pass rate reached 100 percent for the first time in the last four years after implementing this curriculum. We feel our innovation both increased medical knowledge using our resident’s preferred learning style and provided an opportunity for practice and growth as teachers