Curriculum Guidelines for Wilderness Medicine Medical Student Electives: 2025 Update

Abstract

Wilderness medicine elective rotations for graduate medical students are gaining popularity. The number of electives continues to grow, each with varying curriculum, format, and means of assessment. Previous curriculum guidelines attempted to standardize the knowledge-based competency for medical students in this field. Concurrently, medical education has evolved, emphasizing learner-centric and outcome-based observable competencies. Competencies based on individual qualities have since been complemented by practice-specific activities called entrustable professional activities (EPAs), which may consist of smaller observable practice activities (OPAs). This has allowed educators to use a holistic approach to determine that an individual can be fully entrusted to carry out an unsupervised activity. We surveyed current graduate-level wilderness medicine elective directors to determine expert panel recommendations for the EPAs of wilderness medicine for graduate medical students. The aim was to create EPAs and OPAs that experts deem fundamental for a wilderness medicine elective rotation and align them under the framework of entrustable practice in medical education. By mapping wilderness medicine EPAs and OPAs to competencies, we can better measure developmental progression and degree of entrustment in graduate wilderness medicine electives.