Fundamental components of a curriculum for residents in health advocacy.
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.
Flynn
Leslie
L
Queen's University, Canada.
Verma
Sarita
S
D003254:Consumer Advocacy / Q000193:education*; D003479:Curriculum; D003697:Delphi Technique; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency; D016730:Program Development