Competency-based medical education: The spark to ignite healthcare's escape fire

Daniel J. Schumacher*, Benjamin Kinnear, Carol Carraccio, Eric Holmboe, Jamiu O. Busari, Cees van der Vleuten, Lorelei Lingard

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

High-value care is what patients deserve and what healthcare professionals should deliver. However, it is not what happens much of the time. Quality improvement master Dr. Don Berwick argued more than two decades ago that American healthcare needs an escape fire, which is a new way of seeing and acting in a crisis situation. While coined in the U.S. context, the analogy applies in other Western healthcare contexts as well. Therefore, in this paper, the authors revisit Berwick's analogy, arguing that medical education can, and should, provide the spark for such an escape fire across the globe. They assert that medical education can achieve this by fully embracing competency-based medical education (CBME) as a way to place medicine's focus on the patient. CBME targets training outcomes that prepare graduates to optimize patient care. The authors use the escape fire analogy to argue that medical educators must drop long-held approaches and tools; treat CBME implementation as an adaptive challenge rather than a technical fix; demand genuine, rich discussions and engagement about the path forward; and, above all, center the patient in all they do.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)140-146
Number of pages7
JournalMedical Teacher
Volume46
Issue number1
Early online date1 Jul 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Keywords

  • Competency-based medical education
  • quality care
  • trainee assessment
  • >
  • ENTRUSTABLE PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
  • PATIENT
  • CARE
  • PATTERNS
  • OUTCOMES
  • TRIPLE
  • AIM

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