Abstract
BackgroundThere is growing interest in global health among medical trainees. Medical schools and residencies are responding to this trend by offering global health opportunities within their programs. Among United States (US) graduating pediatric residents, 40% choose to subspecialize after residency training. There is limited data, however, regarding global health opportunities within traditional post-residency, subspecialty fellowship training programs. The objectives of this study were to explore the availability and type of global health opportunities within Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited pediatric subspecialty fellowship training programs, as noted by their online report, and to document change in these opportunities over time.MethodsThe authors performed a systematic online review of ACGME-accredited fellowship training programs within a convenience sample of six US pediatric subspecialties. Utilizing two data sources, the American Medical Association-Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database Access (AMA-FREIDA) and individual program websites, all programs were coded for global health opportunities and opportunity types were stratified into predefined categories. Comparisons were made between 2008 and 2011 using Fisher exact test. All analyses were conducted using SAS Software v. 9.3 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC).ResultsOf the 355 and 360 programs reviewed in 2008 and 2011 respectively, there was an increase in total number of programs listing global health opportunities on AMA-FREIDA (16% to 23%, p=0.02) and on individual program websites (8% to 16%, p=0.004). Nearly all subspecialties had an increased percentage of programs offering global health opportunities on both data sources; although only critical care experienced a significant increase (p=0.04, AMA-FREIDA). The types of opportunities differed across all subspecialties.ConclusionsGlobal health opportunities among ACGME-accredited pediatric subspecialty fellowship programs are limited, but increasing as noted by their online report. The availability and types of these opportunities differ by pediatric subspecialty.
Highlights
There is growing interest in global health among medical trainees
Three of the six subspecialties had an increase in the total number of programs
All subspecialties had an increase in percentage of programs posting “international experience” over three years: 8% (AM), 16% (CC), 5% (EM), 7% (H/O), 2% (ID) and 4% (NEO)
Summary
Medical schools and residencies are responding to this trend by offering global health opportunities within their programs. There is limited data, regarding global health opportunities within traditional post-residency, subspecialty fellowship training programs. In the United States (US), over 30% of medical students have participated in a global health experience by the time they graduate [5]; and one third of graduating pediatric residents plan to work or volunteer in a developing country after residency [6]. Within traditional pediatric subspecialty fellowship training programs, the extent of global health opportunities remains unknown, despite that 40% of annual US graduating pediatric residents choose to subspecialize [12]
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