A medicolegal curriculum for internal medicine residents

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Abstract
Many residents lack knowledge about medicolegal issues. To assess the ability of 64 primary care residents to learn legal medicine, we studied the impact of a medicolegal curriculum in a randomized, controlled study. We measured residents’ medicolegal knowledge using a novel test, the Legal Medicine Evaluation (LME). We found that the mean LME score of residents exposed to the curriculum increased 15.5 points (on a 100-point scale) to 65.9 (p<.01), while the mean LME score of control residents increased only 3.5 points, to 53.5 (p=.05). Clearly, residents can learn basic medicolegal principles. Thus, observed deficiencies in medicolegal knowledge most likely arise from inadequate medicolegal instruction.