TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chartash, David
AU  - Rosenman, Marc
AU  - Wang, Karen
AU  - Chen, Elizabeth
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/9/13
TI  - Informatics in Undergraduate Medical Education: Analysis of Competency Frameworks and Practices Across North America
JO  - JMIR Med Educ
SP  - e39794
VL  - 8
IS  - 3
KW  - undergraduate medical education
KW  - medical informatics
KW  - curriculum
KW  - medical education
KW  - education
KW  - North America
KW  - framework
KW  - clinical
KW  - informatics
KW  - Canada
KW  - United States
KW  - US
KW  - teaching
KW  - management
KW  - cognitive
AB  - Background: With the advent of competency-based medical education, as well as Canadian efforts to include clinical informatics within undergraduate medical education, competency frameworks in the United States have not emphasized the skills associated with clinical informatics pertinent to the broader practice of medicine. Objective: By examining the competency frameworks with which undergraduate medical education in clinical informatics has been developed in Canada and the United States, we hypothesized that there is a gap: the lack of a unified competency set and frame for clinical informatics education across North America. Methods: We performed directional competency mapping between Canadian and American graduate clinical informatics competencies and general graduate medical education competencies. Directional competency mapping was performed between Canadian roles and American common program requirements using keyword matching at the subcompetency and enabling competency levels. In addition, for general graduate medical education competencies, the Physician Competency Reference Set developed for the Liaison Committee on Medical Education was used as a direct means of computing the ontological overlap between competency frameworks. Results: Upon mapping Canadian roles to American competencies via both undergraduate and graduate medical education competency frameworks, the difference in focus between the 2 countries can be thematically described as a difference between the concepts of clinical and management reasoning. Conclusions: We suggest that the development or deployment of informatics competencies in undergraduate medical education should focus on 3 items: the teaching of diagnostic reasoning, such that the information tasks that comprise both clinical and management reasoning can be discussed; precision medical education, where informatics can provide for more fine-grained evaluation; and assessment methods to support traditional pedagogical efforts (both at the bedside and beyond). Assessment using cases or structured assessments (eg, Objective Structured Clinical Examinations) would help students draw parallels between clinical informatics and fundamental clinical subjects and would better emphasize the cognitive techniques taught through informatics. 
SN  - 2369-3762
UR  - https://mededu.jmir.org/2022/3/e39794
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/39794
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36099007
DO  - 10.2196/39794
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/39794
ER  -