The overall objective of this book is to provide standards for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes expected of all hospitalists and to provide a framework for ongoing professional and curriculum development for learners at all levels. The framework is intended for use by hospital medicine program directors, directors of medical student clerkships, residency programs, fellowships, and continuing medical education, as well as other educators involved in curriculum development. The competencies do not focus on specific content, but rather general learning objectives within the skills, knowledge, and attitudes related to each topic. Attaining competency in the areas defined in these chapters is expected to require post-residency training. This training is most likely to be obtained through a combination of work experience, local mentorship, and engagement in specific educational programs or fellowship. Hospitalists, directors, and educators can create specific instructional activities and methods chosen to reflect the characteristics of the intended learners and context of the practice environment.

Within each section, individual chapters on focused topics provide competencies in three domains of educational outcomes: the Cognitive Domain (Knowledge), the Psychomotor Domain (Skills), and the Affective Domain (Attitudes). To reflect the emphasis of hospital medicine practice on improving healthcare systems, a fourth section entitled Systems Organization and Improvement is also included. An attempt has been made to make the objectives timeless, allowing for creation of curriculum that can be nimble and reactive to new discoveries.

Although the entire document can be a resource for comprehensive program development, each chapter is intended to stand-alone and thus support curriculum development specific to the needs of individual programs.