A Delphi approach looks promising for designing an optimum curriculum for subjects within a postgraduate programme in sports medicine, say authors of a preliminary study. There is no information on how established postgraduate medical curricula elsewhere have been devised.

This approach was used on fellows of the Australian College of Sports Physicians—18 in all—including staff developing the curriculum, teachers, examiners, and registrars. Three successive rounds of Delphi questionnaires on various aspects of the curriculum and on teaching, assessment, and learning for clinical haematology and biochemistry were administered to each group.

The method proved successful, defining similarities and differences in views on optimum content and how it should be delivered to satisfy desired aims and objectives, skills and competencies and, through the iterative process, achieved consensus among the groups. The study determined ten agreed core topics for the curriculum and preferred teaching and learning methods. Current and optimal methods proved to be remarkably similar across all groups and in tune with current emphasis on student based learning, with problem based learning favoured by examiners and teachers. Response rates of 90% overall were achieved for each questionnaire.

The Delphi method is a way of working towards alignment of views. It therefore facilitates “constructive alignment,” a recent key curriculum design principle to ensure the best possible learning by having examiners, teachers, and curriculum developers working together to reinforce the relation between learning activity learning objectives, and what is assessed.