The Concept of Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME)
Competency-based medical education (CBME) is gaining momentum across the globe and has become a key initiative for faculties of medicine in most countries, particularly at the graduate and post-graduate levels. CBME is one of the most important paradigm shifts in medical education in the last 25 years.
Traditional approaches to medical education are based on a curriculum that is time- and subject-centred, while traditional assessment methods focus more on information retention than on the development of skills, attitudes, and personal knowledge. In other words, past graduates of medicine may have accumulated extraordinary amounts of information, but may also sometimes lack the necessary skills required in real-life medical practice. Competency-based medical education has gained acceptance as the answer to these concerns.
The general concept of competency-based education dates to the previous century and has been the subject of excitement as well as controversy among educators around the world. The term competency has also been interchangeably used with terms such as outcomes, performance, or standards.
On the surface, the concept is simple. Schools need to develop clear outcomes (competencies/skills) for learners to successfully achieve by the end of their training. Based on those goals, schools develop a curriculum, set up the experiences/practices, evaluate the progress, and report on the progress so that learners can move from one phase to the next.
Moving from the theory of competency-based medical education to implementing a system to manage it can be a difficult road, however, without the proper workflows and systems to support this transition.
Lumevi Student Information System
- Flexible
- Easily import and define learning paths
- Quickly manage individual learning objectives
- Effortlessly update and adjust or add evaluation templates
- Powerful and Intuitive
- Simple user interface
- Calculate learner progress automatically
- Conveniently request and complete evaluations
- Relevant
- Collect, summarize and deliver the most useful information
- Clear, concise, and accessible data
- Instantaneous, real-time reporting of the learner’s journey
McMaster University has already navigated this challenging road and has rolled out the CBME framework in many of their Post Grad Medicine Programs under the guidelines from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC), The College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), and with the support of Lumevi’s CBME solution – Lumevi Student Information System (MedSIS 3C).
Lumevi’s approach has been to manage, track and evaluate competencies in real-time. The result is a flexible, intuitive, powerful, and relevant platform that optimizes learning and decision-making across the complete student journey: from admission to graduation. Lumevi cuts through the complexities of implementing CBME.
Lumevi Student Information System – Case Study
A Solution to Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) Implementation
The Case of McMaster University
