title: Fundamental components of a curriculum for residents in health advocacy.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop components of a curriculum for teaching and evaluating Residents as health advocates.
  
  
  METHODS
  Modeled on the Delphi technique, the first step involved a multidisciplinary panel of 10 Queen's University health care providers with expertize in education and patient advocacy. In the context of four Advocacy questions: What is it?, Who does it?, How to teach it?, and How to evaluate it?, they discussed a curriculum framework including graded education, scholarly activity, role modeling, and case examples. In the second step, 24 faculty experts addressed two goals: (1) to identify attributes discussed by the expert panel in step 1 and corresponding measurable behaviours and (2) to refine the curriculum framework proposed in step 1 with emphasis on content and evaluation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Six attributes of a health advocate were identified; knowledgeable, altruistic, honest, assertive, resourceful, and up-to date. Behaviours that reflect these attributes were identified as desirable or undesirable and means of teaching were matched to the attributes. For most residents, skills would be developed in a graded fashion, progressing from advocating for the individual to society as a whole.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study provides a general framework from which specialty-specific curriculums for training health advocates can be developed.
authors.affiliation: Queen's University, Canada.
authors.forename: Leslie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Flynn
authors.forename: Sarita
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Verma
mesh_terms: D003254:Consumer Advocacy / Q000193:education*; D003479:Curriculum; D003697:Delphi Technique; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency; D016730:Program Development