Toward precision medical education: Characterizing individual residents' clinical experiences throughout training

BackgroundDespite the central role of experiential learning in residency training, the actual clinical experiences residents participate in are not well characterized. A better understanding of the type, volume, and variation in residents' clinical experiences is essential to support precision medical education strategies.ObjectiveWe sought to characterize the entirety of the clinical experiences had by individual internal medicine residents throughout their time in training.MethodWe evaluated the clinical experiences of medicine residents (n = 51) who completed training at NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Brooklyn campus between 2020 and 2023. Residents' inpatient and outpatient experiences were identified using notes written, orders placed, and care team sign-ins; principal ICD-10 codes for each encounter were converted into medical content categories using a previously described crosswalk tool.ResultsOf 152,426 clinical encounters with available ICD-10 codes, 132,284 were mapped to medical content categories (94.5% capture). Residents' clinical experiences were particularly enriched in infectious and cardiovascular disease; most had very little exposure to allergy, dermatology, oncology, or rheumatology. Some trainees saw twice as many cases in a given content area as did others. There was little concordance between actual frequency of clinical experience and expected content frequency on the ABIM certification exam.ConclusionsIndividual residents' clinical experiences in training vary widely, both in number and in type. Characterizing these experiences paves the way for exploration of the relationships between clinical exposure and educational outcomes, and for the implementation of precision education strategies that could fill residents' experiential gaps and complement strengths with targeted educational interventions.