A. Jordan2, B. Hughes2, K. Kim1 1University Of Chicago,Department Of Medicine,Chicago, IL, USA 2University Of Chicago,Pritzker School Of Medicine,Chicago, IL, USA
Introduction:
The Women in Medicine Summer Intensive is a research endeavor that seeks to evaluate the efficacy of a mentoring intervention focused on professional development for women medical students.
Two cohorts (n=22) were annually chosen from a competitive pool of first year women medical students to participate in an 8 week intensive consisting of biweekly meetings: one student-led and the other faculty-led. Each week of the intervention focused on a salient professional skill identified by a participant, which was explored via roundtable discussion, skill exercises, and lecture-based formats.
Methods:
Pre- and post-intervention analysis was conducted via quantitative and qualitative surveys of the first cohort to ascertain degree of comfort with skill based professional development. Quantitative statistics and qualitative coding were used to analyze Likert scale rankings of skill confidence and constructed responses gathered from both the first cohort (n=7) and nonparticipant students (n=111). Pre- and post-intervention analysis of the second cohort will be performed following conclusion of the intensive in August 2014.
Results:
In the first cohort, professional development skills addressed in the curriculum included maintaining self, negotiation, assertiveness, career trajectory, self-advocacy, eliciting and receiving feedback, leadership, and managing career opportunities. Intervention participants (n=7) showed statistically significant increases in confidence post-intervention for 12 out of the 15 professional skills surveyed (3 skills: p-value <0.05; 9 skills: p-value <0.01). When compared to non-participant peers (n=34), intervention participants (n=7) showed statistically significant differences in confidence for 7 out of the 15 professional skills (p-value <0.01).
Conclusion:
Through direct interaction with senior faculty, participants were able to identify gender-specific considerations for the adoption of professional skills. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, women medical students felt more capable professionally as a result of their experience in this intervention. The active participant-based curriculum moved the relationship between student and faculty into an action and skill-focused exchange and is a practical approach to meeting the need for women-specific professional development programming, which may be particularly salient for recruitment of women students into surgical and surgical subspecialty fields.