Blueprinting and auditing a postgraduate medical education programme – Lessons from COVID-19

Introduction: Disruptions of the postgraduate (PG) teaching programmes by COVID-19 have encouraged a transition to virtual methods of content delivery. This provided an impetus to evaluate the coverage of key learning goals by a pre-existing PG didactic programme in an Obstetrics and Gynaecology Spe...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rachel Jiayu Lee, Jeannie Jing Yi Yap, Abhiram Kanneganti, Carly Yanlin Wu, Grace Ming Fen Chan, Citra Nurfarah Zaini Mattar, Pearl Shuang Ye Tong, Susan Jane Sinclair Logan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: National University of Singapore 2023-07-01
Series:The Asia Pacific Scholar
Subjects:
Online Access:https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/taps/blueprinting-and-auditing-a-postgraduate-medical-education-programme-lessons-from-covid-19/
Description
Summary:Introduction: Disruptions of the postgraduate (PG) teaching programmes by COVID-19 have encouraged a transition to virtual methods of content delivery. This provided an impetus to evaluate the coverage of key learning goals by a pre-existing PG didactic programme in an Obstetrics and Gynaecology Specialty Training Programme. We describe a three-phase audit methodology that was developed for this. Methods: We performed a retrospective audit of the PG programme conducted by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at National University Hospital, Singapore between January and December 2019 utilising a ten-step Training Needs Analysis (TNA). Content of each session was reviewed and mapped against components of the 15 core Knowledge Areas (KA) of the Royal College of Obstetrics & Gynaecology membership (MRCOG) examination syllabus. Results: Out of 71 PG sessions, there was a 64.9% coverage of the MRCOG syllabus. Four out of the 15 KAs were inadequately covered, achieving less than 50% of knowledge requirements. More procedural KAs such as “Gynaecological Problems” and those related to labour were poorly (less than 30%) covered. Following the audit, these identified gaps were addressed with targeted strategies. Conclusion: Our audit demonstrated that our pre-pandemic PG programme poorly covered core educational objectives i.e. the MRCOG syllabus, and required a systematic realignment. The COVID-19 pandemic, while disruptive to our PG programme, created an opportunity to analyse our training needs and revamp our virtual PG programme.
ISSN:2424-9335
2424-9270