Dermatology Education for Medical Students: Assessing Participation Rates in Clinical Dermatology Electives
Main Article Content
Keywords
Medical education, clinical elective times, dermatology education
Abstract
Introduction: Skin conditions affect 1.9 billion people worldwide and are a common reason for patients to seek health care1. With the high prevalence of skin disease, it is vital that medical students should receive clinic-based education in recognizing and treating skin disorders. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPSoM) currently offers a 4-week clinical dermatology elective to third or fourth year medical students. However, in an increasingly crowded clinical curricula, the dermatology elective is not taken by many students.
Methods: We assessed the percentage of UPSoM students who completed the dermatology elective and analyzed the residency selection of these students between academic years 2012 to 2022. We also explored dermatology elective offerings of medical schools across the United Sates that have a dermatology residency program and investigated the number of schools offering a shortened elective through the American Medical Association’s FREIDA database.
Results: During academic years (AY) 2012 to 2022, 1579 students were enrolled at UPSOM. In this time period, 205(13.0%) students participated in the elective course. Of these 205 students, 31(15.1%) pursued dermatology residency, 105(51.2%) pursued primary care and 22(10.7%) students pursued surgical subspecialties. Of the 142 dermatology residency programs, only nineteen programs (17.0%) offer a shortened elective.
Discussion: Many medical students graduate medical school with little to no dermatology training, despite a high likelihood of encountering skin disease in their future careers. Offering a shortened clinical dermatology elective may allow for more students to participate in hands-on dermatology training.
References
2. Lowell BA, Froelich CW, Federman DG, Kirsner RS. Dermatology in primary care: Prevalence and patient disposition. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2001;45(2):250-255.
3. Cerra CL, Dante A, Caponnetto V, et al. Effects of high-fidelity simulation based on life-threatening clinical condition scenarios on learning outcomes of undergraduate and postgraduate nursing students: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Open. 2019;9(2):e025306.
4. Haidar DA, Kessler R, Khanna NK, et al. Association of a longitudinal, preclinical ultrasound curriculum with medical student performance. BMC Medical Education. 2022;22(1):50.
Article Sidebar
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY): lets others distribute and copy the article, to create extracts, abstracts, and other revised versions, adaptations or derivative works of or from an article (such as a translation), to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), to text or data mine the article, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the author(s), do not represent the author as endorsing their adaptation of the article, and do not modify the article in such a way as to damage the author's honor or reputation.
Authors retain copyright in their work and license the publisher to publish the content. The publisher is the National Society for Cutaneous Medicine, with production and publishing support provided by OJS, Open Journal Systems,see https://pkp.sfu.
Prior to January 2022, authors transferred copyright to the National Society for Cutaneous Medicine. However, all articles are freely available to anyone in the world. There are no subscription fees, page charges, or article processing charges.