Flying blind in American orthopaedic surgery: The urgent need for an educational curriculum in orthopaedic surgery residency training

摘要

Most educational subjects or disciplines have a defined curriculum. Consider, for example, seventh grade Social Studies . in the New York City Public School System. There is a well-structured curriculum which is readily available on the school system's web-site (http://schools.nycenet.edu/offices/teachlearn/ ss/SocStudScopeSeq.pdf). Twenty-four years ago, there was a major initiative in the United States of America (US) to develop an educational curriculum for orthopaedic surgery. Unfortunately, this effort did not come to fruition. The University of Toronto recently reported on their three-year experience with a competency-based curriculum for orthopaedic surgeons [1]. Similarly, Great Britain and Australia have established curriculums that guide their training programmes in orthopaedic surgery [2,3]. There is no established educational curriculum, however, for the education and clinical training of orthopaedic surgeons in the US. We will discuss the history and background of this curricular void, and make recommendations for the future.