Individualized Medical Education in Clinical Training in Internal Medicine: Sharing Experiences

Abstract

Many parts of the world have adopted a competency-based education (CBE) framework in developing medical education programs. This framework emphasizes individual progression toward defined milestones, acknowledging that learners advance at different rates. It requires frequent formative feedback and robust assessment through a Clinical Competency Committee. Because time is no longer the fixed variable in training, learners can progress at different rates, creating opportunities for more individualized training with documented competence and progression. This approach promotes learner ownership, continuous monitoring, and self-regulated learning. This core tenet of residency training in the United States has been adopted by the VinUniversity Internal Medicine Residency under the supervision of Penn’s Graduate Medical Education Curriculum Working Group through the Penn–Vingroup Alliance. In this paper, we share the experience of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at VinUniversity, where CBE is emerging. We describe how we align milestone assessments with outcomes and use feedback within individualized learning plans (ILPs) to help residents maximize learning opportunities and prepare for independent practice through explicit, evidence-based decisions. The significance of this work lies in demonstrating a feasible, context-adapted pathway for operationalizing CBE and embedding ILPs in a training program in Vietnam. It integrates milestones, programmatic assessment, and individualized learning plans into a continuous improvement cycle that is defensible for trainees, accountable to patients, and scalable to other programs in low- and middle-income settings.