41. CREATING A STANDARDIZED TEMPLATE FOR LEARNING GOALS AND OBJECTIVES IN RESIDENCY ELECTIVE CURRICULA

Background ACGME accreditation requires residency programs have curricula with competency-based goals and objectives at each educational level. Prior published attempts at standardizing learning goals and objectives (LGO) mostly focus on specific fields, thus limiting generalizability for programmatic use. The recently published ACGME accreditation criteria prompted our institution to review our elective LGOs and develop a process to facilitate both ease of LGO creation and accreditation compliance. Objectives 1) Identify published standards for residency elective curricula; 2) evaluate the current state of our program's elective LGOs, and 3) pilot a process to implement LGO best practices. Methods We designed an electronic form (e-form) to compare our institution's elective LGOs to those reported in the literature. Two authors independently evaluated and scored our program's electives. Results informed the design of a second e-form for guiding elective directors in creating LGOs meeting accreditation expectations. This form was piloted by 5 elective directors. Results Review of prior studies revealed two major types of elective LGO features: common “core” characteristics, and less frequent “secondary” characteristics. Core characteristics included: demonstration of learner progression over time, inclusion of ACGME's core competencies, measurable deliverables, and expected outcomes. Secondary characteristics included: orientation and reference materials, formal didactics, milestone calendars, and scholarly products. We evaluated 55 unique electives at our program using these characteristics. Twenty percent of our current electives did not have LGOs available. Over 94% of LGOs had not been updated for at least 2-3 years. We also identified gaps between best practices and the current state of our elective LGOs (Figure 1). The new electronic form was piloted by 5 elective directors. Director feedback from our pilot included: checkboxes for common responses; free-text options in all areas; and providing a customizable “sample week” calendar. Conclusions While electives are highly customized by design, establishing LGO guidelines helps to define goals for learner progression, minimizes the difficulties in the transition process, and provides a framework for elective directors as they strive to design the best experience. Our next step will be to implement the e-form for all of our electives.