Core Curriculum

Orthobullets provides an online service called “Core Curriculum 365-Day Study Plan” that is designed to be an annual daily reading plan aimed to build and maintain a core foundation of orthopaedic knowledge. In addition, a secondary service, “Provider Assessment Specialized Skill (PASS)Testmaster,”that works in conjunction with the Core Curriculum and allows for resident progress tracking and objective tracking of ACGME Milestones for knowledge, is also provided.

Core Curriculum 365-Day Study Plan

The curriculum provides a daily study program that allows residents to engage in continuous education throughout the week. The structure of the study plan is below.

  1. The curriculum is broken down into specialty blocks that allow for focused education.

  1. From Monday to Friday, residents receive daily e-mails that include the two topics for the day. These e-mails include suggested articles to read,as well as questions pertaining to each topic.(approximately 30-45 minutes a day)
  1. On weekends, residents are asked to read textbooks and journal articles in preparation for the upcoming week’s topic. Additional reading material will be added as well that will also focus on the upcoming week’s topic. (4-6 hours of reading)

  1. Residents are provided with multiple quizzes and exams throughout the curriculum. If subscribed to PASS Testmaster, the program director is able to view the participation, progress and gaps in knowledge of individual residents, as well as of the residency as a whole.
  2. Weekly quizzes – Every Monday, five-question quizzescovering topics from the prior week’s reading are provided.
  3. Monthly Milestone Exams – Monthly exams contain 25 never-before-seen questions that include topics from across all specialties.
  4. Specialty Exams and Review Webinar – Once a specialty block is complete, residents will take a specialty exam. A review webinar reviewing the correct answers and high-yield learning points is also provided.
  5. June “Mini-OITE” – An end-of-year exam consisting of 100 questions is given.

PASS Validation

This information is provided by Orthobullets:

-Several of the academic programs using PASS conducted a study looking at the impact of using PASS on resident OITE scores. Below is the abstract that was submitted to the AAOS 2016 annual meeting. This is an abstract only, and this study has not been accepted to a peer review journal. Orthobullets was not involved in data analysis or manuscript process.

-Validation of a Web-Based Curriculum for Resident Education inOrthopaedic Surgery
Author BlockBarrett S. Boody, MD, Daniel J. Miller, MD, New York, New York, James W. Bogener, MD, Kansas City, Missouri, Andrew J. Pugely, MD, Coralville, Iowa, Michael F. Schafer, MD, Chicago, Illinois, William K. Payne III, MD, Chicago Heights, Illinois, Jeffrey A. Geller, MD, Rye, New York, Matthew D. Beal, MD, Chicago, Illinois
Introduction: Orthopaedic residency education continues to evolve in thesetting of increased core knowledge and specialization of care. Programsneed to adapt curricula to ensure acquisition of knowledge while providingobjective and equitable assessment of performance.
Methods: Five orthopaedic residency programs adopted a structured,web-based curriculum for the 2013-14 academic year. This onlinecurriculum provides basic educational material on core orthopaedic topicswhile providing access to additional comprehensive resources. Structuredmultiple-choice examinations are incorporated in this curriculum to assessresident knowledge and performance on a regular basis. We reportoutcomes on seventy residents who participated in this pilot program.Resident performance, as measured by curriculum examinations, wascompared to performance on the Orthopedic In-Training Exam (OITE).
Results: Percentage of correctly answered questions within the web-based curriculum demonstrated correlation with 2014 OITE overall scores(R2=0.43, p=0.004). We then evaluated participating residents’ 2013 and2014 OITE scores reported as a percentile compared to similar PGY-levelexaminees to evaluate the effect of the web-based curriculum on OITEperformance, controlling for anticipated OITE raw score increases withprogressing experience. While the scores incrementally increased for thegroup as a whole (n=70, mean=2.5%, p=0.41), the junior residentsubgroup (PGY1-3) produced a statistically significant increase in scores(n=50, mean 7.4%, p=0.043).
Conclusion: Early evaluation of this web-based curriculum suggestspositive results for improving resident’s knowledge base, particularly injunior residents.

Thursday CORE Schedule

Thursday Core schedule is tailored around the Orthobullets Curriculum. Each specialty is allocated an amount of time for resident education as per the curriculum recommendation.

-7:00-8:00 AM – Team-based Learning with case based discussions

  • Each group consists of residents PGY 1-5.
  • Focus is on the prior weekend reading and current weekday topics.
  • Once a month, all residents will complete the monthly Milestone Mock Exam individually during the 7:00-8:00AM hour. The exam will then be reviewed among residents with one faculty advisor from 9:00-10:00AM.

-8:00-9:00AM –M&M, journal club, resident presentations, guest lectures

-9:00-10:00AM – Attending lectures focused on the current week’s reading.