Advanced Assessment to Accelerate Diagnostic Skill Acquisition

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Current approaches to medical education produce new physicians with insufficient clinical competency to practice effectively with limited supervision, which has serious implications for patient outcomes during hospitaloff hours. Up to 70% of patients admitted to a hospital are admitted on nights or weekends, when staffing is low and residents may be in charge of patient care. Off-hours care is linked to an increase in medical errors, surgical complications, and readmission rates. Negative patient outcomes during off hours are 2 to 8 times more likely to occur under the care of residents in their first postgraduate year. We propose to improve undergraduate medical education to minimize the time to clinical competency forfirst year residents through targeted diagnostic reasoning skill development that (1) integrates basic science and clinical instruction; (2) provides deliberate practice with structured, case-based learning opportunities; and (3) enables anytime/anywh