Global Health Training in U.S. Emergency Medicine Residency Programs

Abstract

Objectives: Formal education in global health (GH) and short-term experiences in GH (STEGH) are offered by many emergency medicine (EM) residency programs in the United States. In an increasingly connected world, training in GH and STEGH can provide essential knowledge and practical skills to trainees, particularly at the graduate medical education level. The current core programmatic components and the essential competencies and curricula that support ethical and effective STEGH, however, still vary widely. The authors conducted a survey of the 228 EM residency programs in the United States to describe the current state of GH training and STEGH.Methods: An online survey was developed in REDCap by a team of GH faculty. In July 2018, programs were invited to participate via individual invitation of program directors from a directory. The programs received two reminders to participate until January 2019.Results: Of the 84 programs that responded, 75% offer STEGH and 39% have longitudinal GH curricula. Within these programs, only 55% have dedicated GH faculty and only 70% have dedicated sites. Both faculty and residents encounter funding and insurance barriers; most notably, only 20% of programs that offer STEGH provide evacuation insurance for their residents. Most residents (95%) engage in clinical work along with teaching and other activities, but 24% of programs do not allow these activities to fulfill any residency requirements. Finally, only 80 and 85% of programs offer preparatory and debriefing activities for residents, respectively. Conclusions:While the results of this survey show progress relative to prior surveys, there are still barriers to implementing GH curricula and supporting safe, ethical, and effective STEGH, particularly in the form of continued financial and logistic support for faculty and for residents, in U.S. EM training programs.

Benefits and Challenges of a Global Health Scholars Track for Family Medicine Residents

“…GHST residents attributed their improvements to the program, which also revitalized the passion for medicine to a greater degree than other residency experiences. These results suggest that the GHST was effective in providing opportunities to engage and immerse residents in enriching global experiences, further supporting the value that experiential global health education programs impart on resident training as demonstrated by other institutions (Haq et al, 2019;Hau et al, 2017;Hernandez et al, 2016;Jalan et al, 2020;McHenry et al, 2020;Rybarczyk et al, 2020).…”

“…Medical schools, residency training programs, and fellowship programs have begun adding global health experiences and electives to their curricular offerings, and more residency programs now incorporate global health specialty tracks (Bills & Ahn, 2016;Haq et al, 2019;Jalan et al, 2020;Kolars et al, 2011;McHenry et al, 2020;Rybarczyk et al, 2020). In a systematic review of studies surveying US residency program directors, global health training was particularly prominent in three specialties: 83% of residency programs for preventive medicine, 74% of emergency medicine programs, and 71% of surgery programs included global health training.…”

Underprepared: influences of U.S. medical students’ self-assessed confidence in immigrant and refugee health care

“…GH opportunities in residency also generate interest from highly-ranked fourth-year medical student candidates [ 16 , 20 , 21 ]. However, barriers such as limited numbers of trained faculty, teaching time, and funding make providing these opportunities challenging [ 22 ].…”