Beyond the CLAIM: A Comprehensive Needs Assessment Strategy for Creating an Advanced Medical Education Research Training Program

Researchers created a programmatic needs assessment framework for a continuing professional development (CPD) course focused on health professions education (HPE). The CLAIM strategy incorporates five steps: Competitive analysis, Literature review with thematic analysis, Ask stakeholders, Internal expert review and curriculum Mapping. These steps follow a Discovery-Convergence-Synthesis scheme. The comprehensive needs assessment found that longitudinal digital connection, diverse and in-depth exposure to HPE research techniques, scholarly publishing skills and research leadership and management would be useful for the course's design. "The CLAIM method provided scaffolding to help the authors create a robust curriculum that adopts a scholarly approach for developing a HPE research course," the authors conclude, adding that "this needs assessment methodology may be useful in other CPD contexts" as well.

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