FOM Tertiary Resources Assignment Guide (beginning the 2025-2026 Academic Year): Introduction

Thanks to William McEwen, MLIS for his help with the creation and formatting of the assignment.

This guide is designed to help students in the FOM course to complete their tertiary resources assignment. Students must utilize this guide to complete their assignment. You must pass this assignment to pass the course. Students receiving less than 70% on their assignment will be given 10 additional questions to complete. Your assignment will be emailed to you.

• The assignment is due on August 9, 2024 at 5:00 pm. You may turn in your assignment early.
• Submit your paper via the FOM assignment tool in CANVAS.
• Include your last name in the file name of the assignment.
• Mac Users: You will need to convert your Pages documents to Word so the course director can open them.  From Pages' File menu, select Export > Word. Open the Word file in Pages to make sure the document's format wasn’t changed. You may also turn in your assignments as a pdf file.
• There will be a 5 point deduction for late assignments.
• Refer assignment questions to Professor McEwen.
• Professional resources must be used for all questions not asking for a patient education resource.
• You must use the resources provided in the guide. If you would like to use another professional resource, please ask Professor McEwen for permission.

At the completion of this assignment, students will be able to:

• Quickly find relevant answers to clinical questions about differential diagnosis, diagnostic tests, treatments, and complications.
• Practice using professional drug and herbal monographs to find answers to simple clinical questions
• Find relevant Cochrane systematic reviews
• Cite information resources that were used to answer clinical questions.

USMLE: Biostatistics, Epidemiology/Population Health, & Interpretation of the Medical Literature

• Study design, types and selection of studies (includes dependent/independent variables)
  • Systematic reviews and meta-analysis

USMLE: Social Sciences

• Communication and interpersonal skills, including health literacy and numeracy, cultural competence
  • Patient interviewing, consultation, and interactions with the family (patient- centered communication skills)
    • enabling patient behaviors (eg, education and counseling)
• Systems-based practice (including health systems, public health, community, schools) and patient safety (including basic concepts and terminology)
  • Quality improvement
    • Improvement science principles
    • Variation and standardization: guidelines

AAMC Core Entrustable Professional Activities for Entering Residency

• EPA 7: Form Clinical Questions and Retrieve Evidence to Advance Patient Care