More than a bag of tricks – Curriculum schema for chronic lower extremity wound healing

Abstract

Chronic wound treatment is a huge burden on our healthcare system, yet wound healing is not broadly taught in U.S. medical schools. Chronic lower extremity wounds (CLEW) often have delays in diagnosis of the underlying aetiology and inappropriate evaluation before referral. We devised a CLEW healing curriculum in 2019 for medical students in their clinical years. The curriculum includes a session of brief online learning modules, a multi-disciplinary face-to-face workshop, and an online vignette. Pre-session surveys found that students felt most comfortable describing aetiologies and least comfortable choosing a wound product. Self-reported confidence was significantly higher across all wound types following the online modules (p < 0.001). Performance on the peripheral arterial occlusive disease online modules remained low throughout. Future work aims to determine the success of long-term memory encoding of this curriculum as well as address potential biases that students may have when caring for patients with chronic wounds.