gms | German Medical Science

Objectives: Curriculum mapping of an institutional program to a given national outcome standard plays an increasing role in the design and implementation of competency-based medical education. There is only sparse information in the literature how different mapping approaches compare in depicting the relative coverage by an institutional medical curriculum. We mapped exemplarily the undergraduate medical curriculum of our institution, the Modular Curriculum of Medicine (MCM), Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, to the German national competency-based outcome standard, the Nationaler Kompetenz-basierter Lernzielkatalog Medizin (NKLM).

Methods: The mapping process was done by a constantly reconciling working group. In step 1, we matched MCM level 3 objectives (L3, representing the course learning objectives) to NKLM objectives. A MCM L3 objective was matched when it showed a thematic intersection with or represented a thematic subset of the NKLM objective. In step 2, we employed three primarily quantitative approaches (single MCM L3 match, triple MCM L3 match or relative NKLM L2 by subordinate MCM L3 match). In addition, we employed one primarily qualitative matching approach (MCM L3 content comparison) by three independent raters to derive the degree of NKLM coverage.

Results: In step 1, a total of 8,140 MCM L3 objectives were collated to 2,105 NKLM objectives. In step 2, and overall NKLM chapters and sections, the quantitative approaches yielded high relative coverages (single MCM L3 match: 73%, relative NKLM L2 by subordinate MCM L3 match: 82%), expect with the triple MCM L3 match approach (42%). A lower relative coverage was seen with the qualitative MCM L3 content comparison approach (41%). The interrater concordance was higher than 80% in this approach.

Discussion: Quantitative mapping approaches provide overviews on the pattern of relative coverage by the institutional curriculum and need less resource investment. The qualitative content comparison approach provides a better representation of the scope and depth of the coverage by the curriculum, but needs more resource investment.

Take home message: The approach to curriculum mapping has a high impact on depicting the relative coverage of a national competency catalogue by an institutional medical curriculum.