Extended educational sessions at three family medicine residency programs.

There are few descriptions of graduate medical education curricula in the literature, and the descriptions that have been written have focused more on content than on format. Traditionally, educational presentations in residency programs are offered in one-hour time slots, a format that may be too limited for interactive sessions or hands-on activities. Further, whether these one-hour sessions are offered in the morning, at noon, or in the afternoon, they all present hindrances to residents' attendance. The authors propose that reserving extended blocks of time for educational sessions for residents is one way for programs to ensure both that residents attend the sessions and that they are able to learn what they need to learn during their training to meet the special requirements of the appropriate residency review committee. The authors present the experiences of three family medicine residency programs in developing and implementing extended educational sessions. Each program has multiple training sites, including rural sites. The three programs release residents from their clinical responsibilities to enable them to participate in the half-day to day-long sessions, which cover behavioral issues, procedures training, and other topics. The success of these three programs suggests that extended educational sessions are a viable alternative to the traditional one-hour format.