title: Student-Led Training Day Increases Student Confidence in Women's Primary Care Skills.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Medical students are often apprehensive in approaching basic women's health concepts, including wellness exams, reproductive health concerns, and patient counseling. This study evaluates a novel student-developed and student-run Women's Health Training Day (WHTD) as a means of cultivating medical student confidence in women's primary care early in medical training.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sixty-six first-year medical students participated in WHTD, a voluntary 6-hour weekend day of interactive workshops. Students were divided into groups of six to eight students that rotated together through five workshops focused on the breast exam, pelvic exam, microscopy, family planning, and patient interviews. Before participating in WHTD, students completed surveys indicating their confidence in performing skills related to women's health on a 5-point Likert scale. Students completed an identical survey after participating in all of the WHTD workshops. Changes in pre- and post-training day confidence scores were assessed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Students reported increased confidence in all of the composite sessions that were assessed. The specific skillsets demonstrating the greatest increases in student confidence were speculum handling during pelvic examinations, detecting abnormal breast masses, and recognizing the clinical presentations of common sexually transmitted infections. All but one of the evaluated skills, using a microscope, demonstrated a significant increase in student confidence.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results indicate that the student-implemented and student-run Women's Health Training Day increases student confidence in women's primary care skills. Further studies are needed to determine whether this perceived increase in confidence is associated with increased objective knowledge pertaining to primary care and women's health.
authors.affiliation: Emory University School of Medicine.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shinnick
authors.forename: M Bridget
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Spelke
authors.forename: Ashley Rae
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Martinez
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003479:Curriculum; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D016387:Women's Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D055815:Young Adult