Occupational medicine training into the 21st century.

The Colleges and Faculties of Occupational and Environmental Medicine largely developed to meet the need of postgraduate training in the discipline, and this function remains central to their role in 2010. To this end, a number of these organizations have examined the training curriculum and pathways in their countries and within the last few years have developed new curricula. The Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Australia (RACP) has recently undertaken this process and are about to introduce a new curriculum for the training of occupational and environmental physicians in Australia and New Zealand. The new curriculum will take effect from 2011 [1]. There have been a number of drivers to the development of the new curriculum, both internal and external to the Faculty. Fundamentally, these pressures reflected the needs of trainees for an updated syllabus. Over most of the preceding decade, the failure rates for the exit examination within the Faculty were high and the assessment committee was concerned about this trend. Additionally, the Australian Medical Council reviewed the Faculty processes and criticized the relatively high failure rate attributing this in part to the lack of an updated and modern curriculum. The trainees themselves also had concerns about the training program and content. Further impetus came from the wish to align the educational strategies within the Faculty with modern educational philosophy and with work going on within the college in other medical disciplines. External pressures came from other craft groups and an ongoing desire for the Faculty to redefine the role and definition of occupational medicine practice to keep it contemporary. Finally, the increasing trend to link specialist registration with continuing education for Fellows favoured curriculum development. These forces drove the Faculty to re-examine its core competencies and training processes. Almost simultaneously, the Faculty of Occupational Medicine in Britain [2] and also the College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in the USA [3] produced similar documents.