The University of Minnesota Medical School offers an elective that allows medical students who are new parents or primary family caregivers to earn credit for their caregiving experience.
Emily Cunningham, a third-year medical student at the school, took the “New Parent/Caregiver” elective in July. Her second child was due in May, and she was scheduled to begin rotating surgeries four weeks after giving birth. Her advisor recommended electives instead, helping her make the change.
“And that was a really, really big thing for me and for my family,” Cunningham told MedPage Today. Without the elective, she said she probably would have taken a year off and then started her junior year again.
“If you’re a student, you don’t have a lot of options because you’re not making money,” Cunningham said. “The elective was a great option for me and my family to not only make sure I was on track to graduate, but also get credit for some of the child care work I was already doing. .”
Although dozens of family medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine residencies offer this type of program, the University of Minnesota Medical School may be the only allopathic medical school offering this type of program. there is. Des Moines University College of Medicine and Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine offers similar electives.
In residency, these electives are often a way for new parents to take paid time off to spend time with their newborn child while bringing back knowledge from their experience to share with the medical community.
The University of Minnesota elective was created in 2020, and one student asked internal medicine-pediatrics hospitalist Christina Krohn, M.D., why the school would do something similar to what residents already do with a pediatric component. I asked if there was one. Krohn and his students worked together to design two- and four-week classes. This class is worth 2-4 credits and is taken during the third or fourth year of medical school. (Krohn noted that new parents often take extra vacation time in addition to electives.)
Elective requirements include meeting with the course director for one hour per week, writing a short weekly reflection on an online learning platform, and finally “Tweeting” what you learned with other medical students and residents. Includes sharing with. According to the class syllabus, this could be a blog post, a medical story, or a presentation to colleagues or students.
Krohn said these presentations are very well attended. “There are about 30 residents and students in the room at any given time, and there is always a lot of lively conversation,” she said, adding that the conversations centered on breastfeeding, postpartum issues and sleep.
“There is no better way to monitor a child’s development, especially in the first few weeks and months,” she added.
Cunningham said breastfeeding came up often during weekly reviews. “Before you have a child, you’re like, ‘Yes, breastfeeding is recommended. Everyone should breastfeed,’ and you underestimate how difficult and demanding it is. ” She ended up giving a presentation on how to introduce newborns to families with older siblings.
Cunningham said she’s already using the skills she learned as a parent with her patients. In one case, she was able to convince a 4-year-old who was reluctant to show her stomach to examine her appendectomy incision by asking if she could see the girl’s stuffed puppy. I was able to do it. “The rotation focuses on just that. Just like when you’re caring for a child, you’ve already gained so much knowledge that you can apply it to clinical practice.”
Professor Krohn said one student’s presentation included taking a child to hospital for phototherapy for jaundice, and she said, “It’s probably the simplest hospitalization, but at a time like this… , it’s been a few days since the baby was born, and it’s very difficult.” emotional period. ” Although the student knew it would be an easy admission, the experience provided him with the opportunity to better understand “how unpleasant it can be for families.”
One student at Western Michigan University School of Medicine in Kalamazoo posted a link to X’s course description and wrote: “As a medical student with two children during medical school, I I’m often asked if I need support, but beyond the obvious support, just like childcare, this elective at the University of Minnesota is the definition of support and one that every medical school should take note of.
Since then, Krohn said she has received many messages sharing the post, including one from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
She said she also hears from students and faculty each year asking how they can implement similar electives at their schools. “I’ve had a lot of conversations with people this fall, and certain medical directors this fall have heard about this, and they’re like, ‘What are the logistics?’ So next year. I hope that many new things will come out.”
Krohn said he plans to publish a paper on the elective in the coming months.
Sophie Putka is a corporate and research writer for MedPage Today. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Discover, Business Insider, Inverse, Cannabis Wire, and more. She joined MedPage Today in August 2021. to follow
