About the Curriculum

Housestaff learn to assess and manage common ambulatory problems through their office experiences under the supervision and guidance of their faculty preceptors. To enhance this clinical experience, we have developed a literature-based syllabus that covers a wide span of primary care topics, known as the Yale Office-based Medicine Curriculum. The curriculum provides an evidence-based approach for what we clinically practice and supplements practical experience with a didactic foundation, particularly in the case of unusual conditions that a housestaff might encounter only rarely, and provides updates when new developments occur in therapy or standards of care.

Currently in its Tenth Edition, the curriculum includes two complementary syllabi:

• A Housestaff Guide composed of topical cases, questions, and bibliography of key references;
• A Faculty Guide, which also includes suggested teaching points and answers to the questions.

At our institution, the curriculum is used in our internal medicine and medicine/pediatrics residencies. Each semester, housestaff receive a six-month syllabus covering 24 cases with related questions, and one or more high quality, peer-reviewed articles. Over three years of training, housestaff will be exposed to a compendium of 144 different topics as part of the rotating syllabus of six volumes, one per semester. The cornerstones of this curriculum are the realistic, challenging cases and related questions prepared by Yale faculty, which emphasize practical aspects of diagnosis or management. These exercises prompt not only information recall, but also higher order cognitive skills, such as solving problems, evaluating new information, and making judgments. Topics range from "bread and butter" internal medicine - such as chronic management of diabetes, hypertension, and prevention - to subspecialty areas, such as orthopedics, rheumatology, and dermatology. Each semester includes chapters relevant to current practice, such as coding, ethics and professionalism, or economic aspects of medicine. Each volume also includes recent therapeutic advances and, if relevant, areas of new controversy.

This curriculum is actively updated every six months (in late June and late December) when a new volume is released. We welcome all suggestions, questions, and corrections.

If you are looking for the pediatric version of this educational program, visit the Yale Primary Care Pediatrics Curriculum.