Thematic Analysis of Global Health Trainee Experiences With Mapping to Core Competencies (Research Abstract)
Section snippets
Background
Residents are increasingly participating in global health (GH) electives in resource-limited settings. While anecdotally these experiences are deemed valuable by residents, little is known about the breadth and impact of the clinical scenarios encountered.
Objective
Identify themes in residents’ perception of the most interesting/impactful clinical scenarios which they encountered on GH electives as part of the University of Minnesota GH track.
Methods
Pediatric (8) and medicine-pediatric (5) residents participated in 4-8 week electives as part of a global health curriculum from March to December of 2016. Each was asked to maintain an online disease log where they described the ten most interesting/impactful clinical scenarios encountered. One author read the de-identified comments multiple times identifying themes. A second author then independently coded all of the written comments using the updated themes. The two authors met and compared
Results
We received disease logs from all 13 residents who participated in electives, yielding 129 unique clinical scenarios from eight countries. During the first-order analysis, 8 themes were found in more than 10% of comments and are summarized in Table 1 along with the ACGME Core Competencies which they address.
Conclusion
Residents reported a wide variety of reasons for why the clinical scenarios they encountered on GH electives were impactful, with the most frequent themes mapping well to ACGME core competencies. GH electives may provide an opportunity for residents to develop meaningful competencies in areas which can be difficult to address in traditional residency training. These themes can inform best practice in pre-departure training, highlight potential risk factors for resident moral distress, and