Presented By: Munder Zagaar, Baylor College of Medicine
Co-Authors: Claire Horner, Baylor College of Medicine

Purpose
As medical education embraces integrated curricular design and competency-based frameworks, many foundational and health system sciences have been reimagined as threads weaving through the curriculum horizontally and vertically. This study investigates the experiences and strategies employed by thread directors in a recently integrated medical curriculum, seeking to address the lack of consensus on best practices for thread integration in pre-clinical health sciences education.  

Methods
In July 2023, Baylor College of Medicine implemented a shift to an integrated thread-based curriculum, compressing the pre-clinical program to 12 months and emphasizing problem-based learning across nine organ system courses. This shift necessitated a redesign of standalone courses into longitudinal threads, posing challenges in organization, instruction, and assessment. To address this, 22 faculty were assigned to direct 19 threads, including pharmacology, ethics and social determinants of health. A procedure was subsequently established to facilitate communication between administrators, threads and courses. A survey was conducted to assess thread director experiences, perceived challenges, and strategies employed for content representation during the transition from a lecture-based curriculum to an integrated thread-based approach. 

Results 
As the new curriculum is being implemented, results will be collected following the fall phase of the MS-1 year in January 2024, involving the thread directors' perspectives on thread design and effective approaches for content integration across the curriculum. Upon IRB approval, final findings from both quantitative and qualitative analyses will be presented at the meeting.  

Conclusion
Lessons learned from this study include the classification of effective approaches for course-to-thread transition, the resources needed to accurately manage content across courses that primarily use active learning. This study forms the basis for future research on tracking student experiences with curricular threads and optimal strategies for stakeholders to monitor longitudinal thread performance.