Bringing the Teaching Close to Home: Implementation of a Near-Peer Model for Introductory Hematology-Oncology Fellowship Lecture Series.

New hematology/oncology fellows must rapidly master a wide breadth of clinical information to care for patients with varied diseases. Fellowship programs have wrestled with the most effective way to structure introductory didactics to optimally deliver relevant and appropriate information. We redesigned our 3-month introductory lecture series using a near-peer teaching model. Senior fellows were assigned to lecture on topics from our syllabus that align with their interests and paired with faculty who served as content experts. We hypothesized this approach would result in more fellows rating lectures as targeted to the right educational level; secondarily, this would foster senior fellows’ skills as educators. We present data from the first three years of curriculum implementation. Overall, the redesign was feasible with a several-month preparatory period. Most (71%) fellows felt the series provided information at the appropriate level; 100% of fellows and 83% of faculty felt this approach should continue. Areas for improvement include: planning for faculty-fellow collaboration for content development, coaching on educational design during the preparatory phase, and providing sufficient time for lecture development. The near-peer model has been continued in our program, with plans for iterative improvement.