APGO

Renata R. Urban
University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Study Objectives: Regulation of resident work hours have affected the time available for dedicated education. To address this issue, the education director in the Gynecologic Oncology (Gyn Onc) division at the University of Washington created and implemented a new Gyn Onc curriculum for residents. Our objective was to assess the effect of this new curriculum by assessing resident scores on the Gyn Onc section of the CREOG annual in-service exam.

Methods: In January of 2009, we instituted a new Gyn Onc curriculum of weekly topics based on the Gyn Onc educational objectives of the CREOG. Every week, the residents on the Gyn Onc service, as well as all faculty members, received an e-mail reminder of the upcoming topic to be discussed. Residents were asked to prepare for the week by reading pertinent chapters from Berek & Hacker’s Gynecologic Oncology. The series of topics was repeated during each eight week resident rotation. To evaluate the effect of the new curriculum on resident Gyn Onc knowledge, we performed a retrospective analysis comparing CREOG scores from all graduated residents from 1999-2009 to those from 2010-2011.

Results: Ninety residents were included in this analysis, including 73 females and 17 males. This yielded a total of 295 scores for analysis. The mean percentage correct on the Gyn Onc section of the CREOGs increased significantly by 6.5 percentage points (95% CI 3.5-9.6), from 66.9 in 1999-2009 to 73.6 in 2010-2011. During this time period, the overall CREOG scores did not significantly change (0.2 percentage points, 95% CI -1.7 to 2.1).

Conclusions: This simple tool of scheduled reminders to residents and faculty of weekly curriculum topics improved Gyn Onc CREOG scores. This may be due to expected and intentional review of educational content by attendings.

Key Words: CREOG, gynecologic oncology, curriculum, residents