Tiered curriculum in global child health: A novel CanMEDs-based multidisciplinary educational program

Abstract

Despite the importance of Global Child Health to the practice of 21st century paediatricians, formal comprehensive outcomes-based curricula in this area are lacking. This article describes the development and implementation of a novel, tiered, CanMEDs-based and multidisciplinary curriculum in Global Child Health that was based on a thorough review of the literature. In addition to detailing the steps and results of our literature review, we discuss the three tiers of our curriculum (General Track, Advanced Curriculum and Elective Track) as well as the evidence-informed curricular topics and learning outcomes associated with each tier. Moreover, we highlight the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to Global Child Health education and the potential for this work to help transition Global Child Health training to competency-based models of teaching and learning. This review may help hospitals and residency programs across Canada looking to develop more formal curricula in this often overlooked area.