Gifting a Healing Education Through Writing Life and Art: A Paris Studio Residency

We are two Canadian arts-based educational researchers who collaborated during a studio residency in Paris, France, during May 2015, for ten days. Our residency curriculum included study of feminist poet-thinker Hélène Cixous, taking walks in Paris locales, viewing women’s art, and engaging arts-based inquiry methods such as journaling, life writing and creative embodied practices, as a way to pay attention to and document our daily experiences. We practiced what we call companion pedagogy, with a feminist focus on mothering and gifting relations. We find that arts-based, restorative practices strengthen our wellbeing and resiliency as educators, and also support our desire for a more nurturing, mothering humanity to come forward for gifting a healing education. Healing education begs the question of how to address the resiliency of educators over time through what are increasingly challenging and depleting conditions of institutional cultures and economies. We thus offer creative practices such as studio residencies for collective care and gifting that can nurture a restorative pacing of life, while supporting the resiliency of educators to gift their energies towards creative curriculum visioning and enacting of social change.

Gender-Affirming Care Curriculum in Family Medicine Residencies: A CERA Study

Background and Objectives: Family physicians are positioned to provide care for transgender patients, but few are trained in this care during residency. This study examines associations between program directors’ (PDs) perceptions/beliefs on transgender health care and inclusion of gender-affirming health care (GAH) in residency curriculum. Methods: Questions regarding current training in GAH, provision of GAH, competency in GAH delivery, barriers to GAH training, resident desire for GAH training, access to GAH curriculum, and feelings/perceptions about GAH were included in the 2020 Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance (CERA) Program Director Survey. Results: Challenges to including GAH in residency curriculum were inadequate numbers of transgender patients for residents to provide care (35.4%) and lack of faculty expertise in GAH for transgender patients (24.6%). PDs were more likely to include GAH into curriculum when they provided care for transgender patients in their own practice, completed continuing medical education in GAH since completing residency, had confidence in teaching GAH to residents, had residents who requested training on GAH, or had access to a GAH curriculum. PDs who believed that GAH should be a core competency in residency curriculum were more likely to have residents who requested increased education in GAH and wanted to provide GAH to transgender patients in their future practices. Conclusions: Barriers persist for training family medicine residents in GAH for transgender patients, but further training opportunities for faculty could help to decrease identified barriers. Further research should explore how best to increase family medicine faculty comfort/competence in educating residents in GAH.

COVID-19 disruption to family medicine residency curriculum: results from a 2020 US programme directors survey

ObjectiveThis research project examined the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the required curriculum in graduate medical education for family medicine residencies.DesignOur questions were part of a larger omnibus survey conducted by the Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance. Data were collected from 23 September to 16 October 2020.SettingThis study was set in the USA.ParticipantsEmails were sent to 664 family medicine programme directors in the USA. Of the 312 surveys returned, 35 did not answer our questions and were excluded, a total of 277 responses (44%) were analysed.ResultsThe level of disruption varied by discipline and region. Geriatrics had the highest reported disruption (median=4 on a 5-point scale) and intensive care unit had the lowest (median=1 on a 5-point scale). There were no significant differences for disruption by type of programme or community size.ConclusionProgramme directors reported moderate disruption in family medicine resident education in geriatrics, gynaecology, surgery, musculoskeletal medicine, paediatrics and family medicine site during the pandemic. We are limited in generalisations about how region, type of programme, community size or number of residents influenced the level of disruption, as less than 50% of programme directors completed the survey.

Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor, In our publication (Jacob et al., 2020) we stated on page 39, paragraph 4, the following regarding why gynaecologists avoid cystoscopies: “The reason for this is that acquiring cystoscopy skills is not part of the Obstetrics and Gynecology residency curriculum for Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) certification and most residents graduate from their obstetrics and gynaecology training without learning to perform a cystoscopy and do not feel comfortable using this basic and fundamental diagnostic instrument”. This statement is erroneous. Recently, it was pointed out to us that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada Objectives of Training in the Specialty of Obstetrics and Gynecology were amended and include the following statement applicable after July 1, 2016: “The following procedures in List A are those that the fully trained resident in Obstetrics and Gynecology must be competent to perform independently: 5.2.2.41. Limited cystoscopy” We regret our error and apologise for any inconvenience. G.P. Jacob, G.A. Vilos, F. Al Turki, G. Bhangav, B. Abu-Rafea, AG.. Vilos, A. Ternamian