Creating Milestones and Exit Competencies for Medical School Education in Histology

There is a growing international consensus that the adoption of competency‐based curricula will improve undergraduate medical education. Competencies define measurable behaviours that are expected of graduating medical students and which are attained through a series of progressive milestones that begin on the first day of medical school and continue through to graduation. As part of a curriculum renewal project that embraces milestones and exit competencies, faculty at the medical school at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have generated milestones and competencies in all foundational and clinical medical science domains. This was a significant undertaking for the foundational medical sciences because, although the existing literature provides several examples of medical student exit competencies for clinical specialties, foundational medical science competencies are lacking. We here report on our generation of milestones and exit competencies for a core foundational medical science, histology. The milestones and competencies are brief, coherent and measurable histology‐related skills that will be required of each graduating UBC medical student. Significantly, by framing our competencies with exemplars, we clearly demonstrate how each of our histology exit competencies can be mapped to clinical scenarios that both medical students and post‐graduate physicians will encounter. These examples of milestones and competencies for a core foundational medical science will be useful for educators who are exploring or implementing competency‐based undergraduate medical curricula.