Morning report: An analysis of curricular content and comparison to national guidelines

Background: Morning Report is a long-standing tradition for internal medicine residency programs, but format and content vary greatly and have not been compared to any accepted curriculum standards. The Federated Council for Internal Medicine (FCIM) Task Force on the Internal Medicine Residency Curriculum has published curriculum guidelines for residency programs. Purpose: We compared our institution's Morning Report topics with FCIM curriculum guidelines to determine the feasibility and validity of these guidelines in a residency program. Methods: A review was performed of all Morning Report conferences over 3 years. Results: With the exception of general internal medicine topics, between 60% to 86% of all FCIM organ and system competency focus areas were the subject of one or more of 583 consecutive Morning Reports. Conclusions: The content of our Morning Report conferences closely paralleled FCIM guidelines, suggesting that the FCIM guidelines may be feasible and valid. These guidelines can provide guidance for Morning Report content.