Medical education does not adequately prepare its trainees for the business side of medicine that impacts their future practice. Modernization of resident education is necessary to produce successful physicians.

Non-clinical duties is a large portion of a physician’s day to day life. Residents in any field of medicine feel that this is a largely neglected part of the educational curriculum.

An anonymous survey was conducted amongst resident trainees, fellows, and attending physicians prior to the academic year to determine how comfortable they were in different fields related to the Business of Medicine. Topics were assigned a number on a scale of 1 (no knowledge) to 5 (Comfortable advising a colleague). Based on the survey, interdepartmental lecturers spoke on the lowest comfort level topics from the pre-survey. Eight lectures were incorporated into the dedicated resident didactic schedule with invitations to fellows and attendings to join. Lectures were recorded for future viewing to those that were interested. Another anonymous survey was completed after the series.

There were 43 unique responses to the survey with an equal distribution amongst the post graduate year. The highest proportion of surveys came from physicians with 3+ years of post-residency graduation (21%). The lowest average rating (1.37) was private practice management and the highest average rating (2.34) was personal finances.

As shown from the pre-survey, no matter the years of training a physician has, there is a large portion that feel uncomfortable with non-clinical topics that have large impacts on their career and livelihood. Until resident education is modernized, it will not successfully prepare physicians to be leaders and to tackle the hurdles from the business side of medicine. Our hope is that this lecture series will provide a model for other programs to incorporate into their residency education.