Update: A Review of Women's Health Fellowships, Their Role in Interdisciplinary Health Care, and the Need for Accreditation

Abstract

While Women's Health (WH) Fellowships have been in existence since 1990, knowledge of their existence seems limited. Specialized training in WH is crucial to educate leaders who can appropriately integrate this multidisciplinary field into academic centers, especially as the demand for providers confident in the areas of contraception, perimenopause/menopause, hormone therapy, osteoporosis, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, medical management of abnormal uterine bleeding, office based care of stress/urge incontinence, and genderbased medicine are increasing popular and highly sought after. WH fellowship programs would benefit from accreditation from the American Board of Medical Subspecialties and from the American College of Graduate Medical Education, as this may allow for greater recruitment, selection, and training of future leaders in WH. This article provides a current review of what WH trained physicians can offer patients, and also highlights the added value that accreditation would offer the field. Ultimately, accrediting WH fellowships will improve women's health medical education by creating specialists that can serve as academic leaders to help infuse gender specific education in primary residencies, as well as serve as consultants and leaders, and promote visibility and prestige of the field.

Musculoskeletal Women's Health Education in Physiatry: A Mismatch in Residency Education and Clinical Practice

“…It leads to reason that as these trainees graduated, more faculty would be available to propagate this formally taught (rather than self‐taught) knowledge to future trainees. The value of incorporating educational topics at a national accreditation level has been described previously in other specialties . Accreditation directly benefits physicians by closing the gap between training and clinical expectations, promoting mentorship, building career opportunities, improving national (and international) networks, and developing physician leaders.…”

“…Accreditation directly benefits physicians by closing the gap between training and clinical expectations, promoting mentorship, building career opportunities, improving national (and international) networks, and developing physician leaders. Accreditation benefits physicians and governing organizations by bringing recognition and visibility to clinical programs as well as to the medical specialty . Accreditation directly improves patient care by building clinical programs that lead to expedited and broader patient access to physicians .…”

“…Accreditation benefits physicians and governing organizations by bringing recognition and visibility to clinical programs as well as to the medical specialty . Accreditation directly improves patient care by building clinical programs that lead to expedited and broader patient access to physicians . Accreditation also indirectly improves patient care by increasing clinical and research revenues, thereby improving clinical programs, education, and research .…”

“…The value of incorporating educational topics at a national accreditation level has been described previously in other specialties. 48 Accreditation directly benefits physicians by closing the gap between training and clinical expectations, promoting mentorship, building career opportunities, improving national (and international) networks, and developing physician leaders. Accreditation benefits physicians and governing organizations by bringing recognition and visibility to clinical programs as well as to the medical specialty.…”

“…48 Accreditation also indirectly improves patient care by increasing clinical and research revenues, thereby improving clinical programs, education, and research. 48 Addressing MSK WH topics in the ACGME PM&R program requirements or the milestones and within the American Board of PM&R board certification outline would potentially raise the bar to help improve PM&R trainee education, increase awareness of MSK WH research, increase the number of women's health-specialized physiatrists (and increase the number of physiatrists comfortable with provided women's health care), increase visibility of physiatrists as MSK WH providers, offload primary care physicians through coordinated multidisciplinary care, improve identification and management of women's health issues, and help to reduce inadequate and disparate care for women across their lifespan. The ACGME PM&R Milestones currently lists the ability for a resident physician to "differentiate etiologies for musculoskeletal syndromes across the spectrum of ages and impairments" as falling within the scope of "Level 3" medical knowledge acquisition requirement for musculoskeletal disorders, which is below the "Level 4" target for graduation from PM&R residency.…”