Increasing resident recruitment into family medicine: effect of a unique curriculum in integrative medicine.
BACKGROUND
Healthcare reform is highlighting the need for more family practice and other primary care physicians. The Integrative Medicine in Residency (IMR) curriculum project helped family medicine residencies pilot a new, online curriculum promoting prevention, patient-centered care competencies, use of complementary and alternative medicine along with conventional medicine for management of chronic illness. A major potential benefit of the IMR program is enhanced recruitment into participating residencies, which is reported here.


METHODS
Using an online questionnaire, accepted applicants to the eight IMR pilot programs (n = 152) and four control programs (n = 50) were asked about their interests in learning integrative medicine (IM) and in the pilot sites how the presence of the IMR curriculum affected their ranking decisions.


RESULTS
Of residents at the IMR sites, 46.7% reported that the presence of the IMR was very important or important in their ranking decision. The IMR also ranked fourth overall in importance of ranking after geography, quality of faculty, and academic reputation of the residency. The majority of IMR residents (87.5%) had high to moderate interest in learning IM during their residency; control residents also had a high interest in learning IM (61.2%).


CONCLUSIONS
The presence of the IMR curriculum was seen as a strong positive by applicants in ranking residencies. Increasing the adoption of innovative IM curricula, such as the IMR, by residency programs may be helpful in increasing applications of competitive medical students into primary care residencies as well as in responding to the expressed interest in learning the IM approach to patient care.
Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. Electronic address: plebenso@email.arizona.edu.
Patricia
P
Lebensohn
Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Sally
S
Dodds
Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Audrey J
AJ
Brooks
Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Paula
P
Cook
Department of Family Medicine, University of Connecticut, CT.
Mary
M
Guerrera
Department of Family Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX.
Victor
V
Sierpina
Beth Israel Residency in Urban Family Practice, New York, NY.
Raymond
R
Teets
Family Medicine Residency, Maine-Dartmouth, Augusta, ME.
John
J
Woytowicz
Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Victoria
V
Maizes
D000328:Adult; D000529:Complementary Therapies / Q000193:education*; D003479:Curriculum; D004503:Education, Medical, Graduate; D005194:Family Practice / Q000193:education*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D055048:Integrative Medicine / Q000193:education*; D007396:Internship and Residency; D008297:Male; D011320:Primary Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
Integrative medicine; family medicine; family medicine residency; graduate medical education; medical education