In addition to the product itself, DynaMed provides other valuable resources for residency programs to reach competency objectives. These tools assist in attaining each of the six ACGME Competency requirements for Practice-Based Learning and Improvement.

The most effective way to demonstrate competency for accessing on-line medical information during patient care and to provide effective education is to integrate this process with actual practice-based answering of clinical questions. As such, DynaMed offers two documents to facilitate this achievement.

The first is a two page Resident Assignment Sheet for Answering Clinical Questions, which provides data capture for both resident and faculty records. Please see MS Word document above labeled as "Clinical Questions Assignment Sheet".

Furthermore, by combining the activities of DynaMed peer review, evidence integration, critical appraisal, quality improvement, and presentation, residents can complete a manageable project that demonstrates how all of these activities are inter-related. A Practice-Based Learning Competency Tracker is offered to track both competency achievement and progression through this process. This is available as an MS Word document above labeled as "Competency Tracker".
 

Residents in all specialties are now expected to conduct scholarly effort during training. Traditional research and publication efforts do not routinely adapt to residency program schedules. Residents can review or author for DynaMed (with faculty co-review) and we can tailor these opportunities to fit specific topics of interest and adjust deadlines to meet residency program schedules.
 

Research Validates the Benefits of DynaMed:

Research supported by the National Science Foundation (a controlled, randomized trial) found that with access to DynaMed, primary care clinicians answered more clinical questions than without access to DynaMed. More importantly, with DynaMed, primary care clinicians found more answers that changed clinical decisions. Further still, in terms of how DynaMed ranked versus competing services, the Level of Evidence for answers in DynaMed met or exceeded what could be found in a combination of commonly used point-of-care references 87% of the time. The resulting article for this study was published in Annals of Family Medicine (November/December 2005).