Pairing podcasts with discussions in medical curriculums improves menopause knowledge
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Key takeaways:
- Menopause knowledge increased after implementation of a curriculum using informative menopause podcasts.
- Residents rated the podcasts as convenient and effective as the equivalent amount of reading.
Curriculums that paired several podcast episodes with case-based classroom discussions improved preparation and knowledge on menopause among OB/GYN, family medicine and internal medicine specialists, researchers reported in Menopause.
“Menopause, due to loss of estrogen with ovarian aging, affects all women at midlife and some transgender men and nonbinary individuals. Hot flashes, night sweats and sleep disruption affect 80% of women and 60% seek relief from health care professionals,” Amanda L. Clark, MD, MCR, MSCP, FACOG, senior affiliate investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research and urogynecology physician at Kaiser Permanente Northwest, told Healio. “However, most doctors receive little or no education about menopause care and are unprepared to offer effective therapy. Our curriculum successfully addressed the knowledge gap for medical residents, and we have published our curriculum so that it may be easily replicated.”
Clark and colleagues developed and tested an educational curriculum that incorporated six podcast episodes about menopause among 200 residents from two OB/GYN (n = 43), two family medicine (n = 71) and two internal medicine (n = 86) programs. Researchers used national surveys of residents’ needs to identify gaps in knowledge of menopause and fill those gaps with informative podcasts.
The six podcasts ranged from 12 to 21 minutes in length and addressed various menopause topics, including etiology and physiology, hormone therapy risks and benefits, hormone therapy to treat systemic symptoms, nonhormone therapy to treat systemic symptoms, genitourinary syndrome of menopause, treatment of menopause for women with breast cancer history, hormone therapy cessation and abnormal uterine bleeding.
Overall, 58% of residents completed pre- and post-curriculum assessments of a 15-item knowledge test and self-ratings of their menopause knowledge, comfort and preparedness.
After implementation of the curriculum, the proportion of correct menopause knowledge responses rose from 60.8% to 79.1%. Improvements were not significantly different by specialty or by residency year.
Residents who listened to the entirety of all six menopause podcast episodes (P < .001) and residents who attended the classroom session (P = .003) showed higher knowledge gains compared with those who did not listen to all the podcasts or did not attend the classroom session.
Self-ratings from residents on their menopause knowledge, comfort and preparedness improved after implementing the curriculum with podcast episodes across all specialties. Seventy-three percent of residents rated the podcast formats as convenient, and 65% rated them as effective compared with an equivalent amount of reading.
“Our study demonstrated short-term gains in knowledge and self-ratings of preparedness,” Clark said. “Future studies are needed to determine whether this results in improvements in patient care.”
Perspective
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Mary Jane Minkin, MD, FACOG, NCMP
Vesco and colleagues present relevant trainees in OB/GYN, internal medicine and family practice with a streamlined curriculum of podcasts and limited in-class exposure. They surveyed the participants for satisfaction with the didactic approaches, and they validated that the residents gained knowledge from the exposure. All their results were favorable.
Their now validated approach should be very useful. As the authors cited in their work, the teaching of menopause care since 2002 and the release of the Women’s Health Initiative results led to the near abolition of menopause education in this country. Wen Shen, MD, MPH, and colleagues from Johns Hopkins surveyed residency programs in the U.S. and Canada in OB/GYN 10 years after the release and found that 20% of their programs had a formal menopause curriculum (Christianson MS, et al. Menopause. 2013;doi:10.1097/GME.0b013e31828ced7f). Peter Schnatz, DO, of Reading Pennsylvania repeated a survey 20 years after the release and found the current number to be 30% (Allen JT, et al. Menopause. 2023;doi:10.1097/GME.0000000000002234). With an ever-burgeoning menopausal population, all OB/GYNs, internists and family practitioners should have the requisite training.
We do know that our trainees do well with educational modalities that can present didactics while they are multitasking — commuting and exercise time are good examples that the investigators in Portland studied. The trainees did seem to learn while they were otherwise active; multitasking in these situations seemed to work. The investigators also addressed the three major blocs of practitioners who care for midlife women.
Many menopause practitioners have noted a significant uptick in women interested in care; an article published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine almost exactly a year ago produced a surge in enquiries (Dominus S. Women have been misled about menopause. The New York Times. Published Feb. 1, 2023. Accessed Feb. 23, 2024). The author of that article was the keynote speaker at The Menopause Society’s annual clinical meeting and she received a standing ovation. I am always glad to see practitioners rising to the occasion and trying to optimize education on this topic.
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