Medical School Hotline: Liaison Committee on Medical Education Accreditation: Part II: The Graduation Objectives.

An essential accreditation requirement of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, is Standard 6: “The faculty of a medical school define the competencies to be achieved by its medical students through medical education program objectives and is responsible for the detailed design and implementation of the components of a medical curriculum that enables its medical students to achieve those competencies and objectives. The medical education program objectives are statements of the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes that medical students are expected to exhibit as evidence of their achievement by completion of the program.”1 The program objectives must be defined in outcome-based terms that allow the assessment of medical students' progress, and are made known to all medical students, faculty, residents, and others with responsibility for medical student education and assessment. In June 2008, the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) Curriculum Committee developed the current set of institutional graduation objectives. The committee took into account objectives and competencies defined by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in 1998 and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in 1999. The former stated the learning objectives for undergraduate medical student education, aimed to elucidate the essential attributes needed by physicians to fulfill their duties to society.2 These essential attributes are: Physicians must be altruistic. Physicians must be knowledgeable. Physicians must be skillful. Physicians must be dutiful. The ACGME stated the following general competency categories to guide medical schools to prepare graduates3: Patient care Medical knowledge Practice-based learning and improvement Interpersonal and communication skills Professionalism System-based practice These graduation objectives were communicated with the broader community through the Hawai‘i Medical Journal.4 Since then, the Curriculum Committee has annually reviewed these objectives, with the last review in March 2015. This article outlines JABSOM's Graduation Objectives and describes how they are used by faculty to monitor student progress. These objectives and detailed evaluation indicators can be found on the JABSOM website.5 The JABSOM Graduation Objectives are organized under the following seven major headings: