STEP 2 CK Content Description

General Principles

Infancy and Childhood

• Normal growth and development

Adolescence

• Sexuality; separation from parents/autonomy; physical changes of puberty

Senescence

• Normal physical and mental changes associated with aging

Medical Ethics and Jurisprudence

• Consent and informed consent to treatment (eg, full disclosure, alternate therapies, risks and benefits, life-support, advance directives, health care proxy) and research issues (eg, consent, placebos, conflict of interest, vulnerable populations)
• Physician-patient relationship (eg, truth-telling, confidentiality, privacy, autonomy, public reporting) and birth-related issues (eg, prenatal diagnosis, abortion, maternal-fetal conflict)
• Death and dying (eg, diagnosing death, organ donation, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide) and palliative care (eg, hospice, pain management, family counseling, psychosocial and spiritual issues, fear and loneliness)

Applied Biostatistics and Clinical Epidemiology

• Understanding statistical concepts of measurement in medical practice
• Interpretation of the medical literature

Systems-Based Practice and Patient Safety

• Systems-based practice and quality improvement (microsystems and teams including hand-offs, standardization of processes, reducing deviance)
• Patient safety, medical errors and near misses (sentinel events, problem identification, root cause analysis)