The "Medical Peer Review" curriculum of the German Medical Association

Considering the increasing interest in peer review procedures over the past few years, the German Medical Association (Bundesarztekammer) published a curriculum document in 2011 titled "Medical Peer Review''. This curriculum has been conceived to offer guidance for establishing this particularly promising voluntary instrument which links medical quality development with professional learning, focusing and promoting communication and knowledge transfer between experts. Therefore the peers' communicative and social competencies play a central role, including respect and appreciation for each other, the ability to create an atmosphere of trust, to reflect one's own role, to focus on concrete solutions and to constructively deal with conflicts, resistance and fear. For these reasons, the practice-oriented curriculum accentuates both the skills of designing, planning and conducting peer reviews and the necessary personal skills such as the techniques of solution-focused communication and conflict management.