A Guide to Competencies, Educational Goals, and Learning Objectives for Teaching Human Embryology in an Undergraduate Medical Education Setting

With the rapidly changing course of medical education and ever-increasing time restrictions on basic biomedical science instruction, most educators have one question in common—what is the most relevant information for the next generation of physicians? The Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME) and the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA) support a list of learning objectives for medical students defined by faculty prior to any educational activities, regardless of pedagogy. The question remains—what ensures competency for medical students in a given subject area upon completion of the course? To accomplish the task to ensure competency in human clinical embryology, a 6-month interactive online collaboration was formed. The outcome is a set of competencies in human embryology that should be required of all medical students, with the goals and learning objectives required to achieve these competencies.