An Integrated Virtual Family Curriculum to Introduce Specialty-Specific Clinical Skills to Rising Third-Year Medical Students

Background: Transitioning from a preclinical to a clinical curriculum can be challenging for medical students. As a central component of a new 3-week transition course, we designed, implemented, and evaluated an innovative Virtual Family Curriculum to introduce rising 3rd-year medical students to the knowledge, skills, and cultures of 6 core medical and surgical specialties. Description: The authors designed a 6-case, 24-hour, 3-generation Virtual Family Curriculum and a 6-station summative Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Each case contains a lecture, video, discussion questions, skills practice, and faculty guide. We used both qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods. Evaluation: Ninety-eight students took the inaugural course in 2012. All students passed the final OSCE. Students rated the virtual family curriculum a 5.17/6 (6 = highest). Comments about the curriculum were uniformly positive. Conclusions: We created and implemented an integrated Virtual Family Curriculum that systematically teaches specialty-specific knowledge and skills. This curriculum facilitates students' transition to clinical clerkships.