Change Management Support in Postgraduate Medical Education: A Change for the Better

Curriculum change is inevitably a part of postgraduate medical education (PGME) due to a necessity to rapidly adapt to changes in societal needs, educational philosophy and technological advances. Initiating, adopting as well as sustaining successful change can be very challenging especially in complex and time-constrained environments such as healthcare and PGME. Indeed, research has shown that educational changes do not always lead to the desired adjustments in practice. Surprisingly, implementation processes in healthcare and, more particularly, those in medical education are rarely supported by change management principles despite the scale and implications of curriculum reforms that justify guidance of such implementation processes. Insights from a change management perspective could help to smoothen the transition from theory to practice by guiding implementation processes and provide support in routinizing innovations in standard practice. A thorough description about change from an educational as well as a change management perspective is made, followed by the experiences with introducing change management principles into PGME. Lastly, the potential of change management principles for future changes in medical education, and their practical implications, is presented.