Integrating Women's Health Education into the Internal Medicine Residency Program Curriculum.

Objectives: National guidelines and the American Board of Internal Medicine have highlighted critical areas of women's health (WH) that are important to the training of Internal Medicine (IM) residents. Our objective was to assess and improve WH education in a large academic community-based IM residency program.

Methods: An anonymous online survey was sent to IM residents to assess their perceived comfort, knowledge, and importance, and exposure to 34 WH topics identified as critical to the training of an internist.

AAIM Recommendations for the 2020-2021 Internal Medicine Residency Application Cycle in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This statement was released in June 2020 by the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine to provide guidance for the 2020-2021 residency application cycle in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many of the recommendations are specific to this cycle, others, such as the Department Summary Letter of Evaluation, are meant to be an enduring change to the internal medicine residency application process. AAIM realizes that some schools may not yet have the tools or resources to implement the template fully this cycle and look toward collaboration within the internal medicine education community to facilitate adoption in the cycles to come.

Wellness and Work: Mixed Messages in Residency Training.

Resident physicians are at higher risk for depression, anxiety, and burnout when compared with same-age peers, resulting in substantive personal and professional consequences. Training programs across the country have acknowledged the gravity of this situation and many have implemented programs and curricula that address wellness and resilience, yet the benefits of such initiatives are still largely unknown. While the development of wellness programming is well intentioned, it is often incongruent with the residency training environment.

The SGIM TEACH Program: A Curriculum for Teachers of Clinical Medicine.

Background: Demand for faculty with teaching expertise is increasing as medical education is becoming well established as a career pathway. Junior faculty may be expected to take on teaching responsibilities with minimal training in teaching skills.

Aim: To address the faculty development needs of junior clinician-educators with teaching responsibilities and those changing their career focus to include teaching.

The new extended-cycle levonorgestrel-ethinyl estradiol oral contraceptives.

Effective contraceptive counseling requires an understanding of a woman's preferences and medical history as well as the risks, benefits, side effects, and contraindications of each contraceptive method. Hormonal contraceptives using a variety of delivery methods are highly effective and this review highlights the new extended-cycle levonorgestrel-ethinyl estradiol contraceptives. Extended-cycle OCPs are unique in offering fewer or no withdrawal bleeds over the course of one year but providers need to carefully counsel women regarding the initial increased breakthrough bleeding.

Contraception choices in women with underlying medical conditions.

Primary care physicians often prescribe contraceptives to women of reproductive age with comorbidities. Novel delivery systems (e.g.

Using direct observation, formal evaluation, and an interactive curriculum to improve the sign-out practices of internal medicine interns.

The safe transfer (handoff) of responsibility for patient care from one physician to another requires that health care facilities have rigorous sign-out systems and that physicians develop effective communication skills. In 2007 and 2008, to improve the spoken and written sign-out practices of the 25 interns at Allegheny General Hospital (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the authors designed and administered Likert scale surveys about training in and satisfaction with current sign-out practices; directly observed and evaluated interns performing spoken sign-outs; assessed and graded interns' sign-out sheets; and compared sign-out sheets with patient records to evaluate their accuracy. On the basis of their findings, the authors developed a new curriculum with didactic and interactive components to target intern-level and system-level problems.

Interdisciplinary curriculum to train internal medicine and obstetrics-gynecology residents in ambulatory women's health: adapting problem-based learning to residency education.

Objective: Although residents in internal medicine (IM) and obstetrics-gynecology (OG) must provide primary care for women, studies indicate that both groups require more skills and training in women's health. Our goals were to assess the needs of residents at our academic medical center and to design an interdisciplinary curriculum that addresses these needs utilizing a modified problem-based learning (PBL) format. The aim of this article is to report on the development, logistics, and successful implementation of our innovative curriculum.

Helping women choose appropriate hormonal contraception: update on risks, benefits, and indications.

Primary care physicians frequently provide contraceptive counseling to women who are interested in family planning, have medical conditions that may be worsened by pregnancy, or have medical conditions that necessitate the use of potentially teratogenic medications. Effective counseling requires up-to-date knowledge about hormonal contraceptive methods that differ in hormone dosage, cycle length, and hormone-free intervals and are delivered by oral, transdermal, transvaginal, injectable, or implantable routes. Effective counseling also requires an understanding of a woman's preferences and medical history as well as the risks, benefits, side effects, and contraindications of each contraceptive method.

Back to the basic sciences: an innovative approach to teaching senior medical students how best to integrate basic science and clinical medicine.

Abraham Flexner persuaded the medical establishment of his time that teaching the sciences, from basic to clinical, should be a critical component of the medical student curriculum, thus giving rise to the "preclinical curriculum." However, students' retention of basic science material after the preclinical years is generally poor. The authors believe that revisiting the basic sciences in the fourth year can enhance understanding of clinical medicine and further students' understanding of how the two fields integrate.

Primary care program directors' perceptions of women's health education: a gap in graduate medical education persists.

Background: Previous studies found that internal medicine residents are not adequately prepared to provide comprehensive primary care to women. The impact of subsequent national guidelines emphasizing women's health education during residency is unknown.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of primary care internal medicine residency program directors (PDs) in the United States.

Do Women's health internal medicine residency tracks make a difference?

Background: Women's health tracks (WHTs) were developed to overcome identified deficiencies in residency training. Their effectiveness in preparing residents to manage both gender-neutral and gender-specific medical conditions is unknown.

Methods: Using current guidelines for internal medicine training, we designed a 65-item survey to measure residents' knowledge, comfort levels, and referral patterns concerning two gender-neutral topics (diabetes and thyroid disease) and two gender-specific topics (polycystic ovarian syndrome [PCOS] and menopause).