Developing an Inclusive Scholarship Curriculum for Medical Students

Problem As part of a curriculum renewal, in 2020, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis sought to create an integrated curriculum that allows students to explore 4 academic career pathways (advocacy/global health, education, innovation, and research) and engage in scholarship activities - the Inquiry Curriculum. The curriculum needed to focus on foundational scholarship skills that would be applicable to all pathways. This article describes the process used to develop the curriculum learning objectives and lessons learned from initial implementation. Approach The authors used a modified Delphi process to survey faculty experts from the 4 pathways to determine the objectives (March-May 2020). Twenty-four faculty were surveyed about 48 initial objectives created using Glassick's scholarship criteria. After 2 rounds, 28 objectives met consensus. Further oversight committee review and revisions by session leads resulted in 77 unique objectives for 23 sessions in the curriculum that launched in spring 2021. Outcomes Four themes were identified from student feedback: (1) the Inquiry Curriculum framework creates opportunities for students to gain exposure to various approaches to understanding and addressing health care problems, (2) the curriculum targeted higher-level objectives for traditional research content and lower-level objectives for nontraditional content, (3) Glassick's criteria provided a useful structure for students to understand the rationale for and ordering of content, and (4) the curriculum had natural overlap with content often taught elsewhere in the curriculum, including evidence-based medicine, health equity, public and population health, and quality improvement and patient safety. Next Steps The authors plan to consolidate sessions where there is redundancy, expand other sessions that require more time, and more purposefully discuss prior content when redundancy is intentional. Exploring other potential measures of curricular success, such as student learning outcomes, scholarly productivity, and impact on future scholarship engagement and career paths, is part of ongoing work.