Fundamental components of a curriculum for residents in health advocacy.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To develop components of a curriculum for teaching and evaluating Residents as health advocates. METHOD: 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.