Background: A novel and comprehensive two-year health policy curriculum was developed and implemented for family medicine residents at two University of Toronto-affiliated teaching sites.
Aim: To evaluate the impact of the curriculum on residents' knowledge of health policy issues, and its usefulness to their learning.
Method: The evaluation included a pre-post delivery assessment of residents' content-based knowledge of issues in the Canadian healthcare system. Residents were also asked to evaluate the content, process and usefulness of the health policy curriculum.
Results: At the end, more than two-thirds of residents had a better understanding of the Canadian healthcare system. The overall pre-post scores showed that residents retained content-based facts in some detail. However, more importantly, residents' positive evaluations of the curriculum indicated they were engaged, enthusiastic and recognized its importance for their learning.
Conclusion: Despite residents' positive evaluations, questions remain as to how best to assess the success of health policy curricula. Moving beyond the popular pre-post test, less traditional approaches might complement standard program evaluation methods in future. As educators increasingly develop curricula aimed at non-biomedical expertise, we must consider how we can most meaningfully evaluate long-term impact on graduates' approach to clinical practice and their engagement in health system advocacy.