Resident Wilderness Medicine Curriculum Consensus Guidelines: Summarization and Recommendations for Resident Rotations in Wilderness Medicine

Introduction-Wilderness medicine education is one of the fastest growing facets of both graduate and undergraduate medical education. Currently, there are curriculum guidelines for both student elec-tives and fellowships in wilderness medicine. However, there are no guidelines for resident elective curricula. The student/resident education committee of the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) convened a task force to develop curriculum guidelines for these electives.Methods-A survey of previously described core wilderness medicine topics was sent to a cohort of educators involved in wilderness medicine resident electives. They were asked to rank topics on the basis of their importance of being included on a Likert scale. Multivariate analysis of medians was used to distinguish among topics to determine which topics were voted most and least necessary for a curriculum.Results-Of the database members contacted, 35 responded to the survey. The described current state of residency electives was that 16 institutions offered their own elective (46%). For subject preferences, multivariate analysis of scoring distribution medians demonstrated a significantly higher pattern of re-sponses (P<0.01) for subjects with a median of 3 (must include) than for the lowest-scoring subjects that had a median of 1 (can include). Every topic was rated "must" by at least 1 respondent. Topics were further subdivided into an educational framework reflecting a common approach to education of wilder-ness medicine fellows focusing on education, leadership, knowledge, and skills.Conclusions-There was a wide variety in the ranking of topics; however, there were multiple topics on which a consensus for inclusion was reached. These topics are organized and presented here as a suggested curriculum by the student/resident education committee of the WMS