As a medical educator, chances are you’ve heard the terms “silo” and “integrated” more times than you can count. Increasingly, we are asked to integrate our teaching and stop working in silos, but we aren’t often given the ways and means to do so.

What is a silo exactly? How do I know if we are working in “silos”? The term is not unique to medical education. Organizations across industries are often said to function in silos. Broadly, Merriam-Webster defines a silo in the workplace as:

An isolated group or department that functions apart from others, especially in a way seen as hindering communication and cooperation.

Applying this to curriculum development, silos are assumed to hinder a student’s ability to integrate different pieces of knowledge across disciplines and use them for problem solving.

That’s what they mean? Ouch. None of us would do such a thing on purpose. We’ve all put a great deal of effort into “integrating” our curriculum.

Many educators and schools think they have “done” it, when in fact, they may have more work to do yet. Designing an integrated curriculum, as viewed from the outside, does not necessarily promote a student’s ability to integrate knowledge for problem-solving within.

Is there a Simple Solution to the Silo Problem?

Put simply, learners benefit when educators integrate content. We want to do it, but are challenged by the question:

How do we tear down the silos and build bridges between disciplines?

Below, we break down the problem and offer a simple, easy-to-use, no cost solution: the Session Integration Tool.

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Problem

Integration practices may fail at the session level when foundational sciences are taught asynchronously.

Solution

Trans-disciplinary delivery at the session level to cultivate cognitive integration.

Outcome

Enhanced integration promotes long-term retention when knowledge is organized in a way that mirrors recall in clinical practice.

The session integration tool (SIT) is an analytic, developmental rubric for medical educators to conduct a quick and easy assessment of cross-discipline integration within a single academic session. The SIT allows the user to assess session-level integration given three criteria: development, delivery, and outcomes.