Abstract

Background: To meet the rising interest in surgical global health, some surgical residency programs offer global health experiences. The level of interest in these programs, however, and their role in residency recruitment and career planning has not been systematically evaluated.

Objective: (1) Define interest in global health among Otolaryngology residents in the USA. (2) Assess engagement of Otolaryngology residencies in global health training. (3) Determine barriers to global health training in residency.

Methods: A survey questionnaire was developed and sent to all Otolaryngology Residency Program Directors for distribution to all current Otolaryngology residents in the US.

Results: A total of 91 complete surveys were collected. A majority of respondents felt that global health was either "very important" or "extremely important" (67%). Two-thirds of respondents had prior global health experience (68%). While 56% of respondents would definitely participate in a global health elective and 78% would likely or definitely participate, only 37% of residency programs offered a global health experience. The availability of a global health elective significantly correlated with residency match choice in respondents with previous global health experience. The three most common barriers to participation were insufficient time, insufficient funding, and lack of program.

Conclusion: Participation in bilateral and equitable international electives is a unique experience of personal and professional growth. There is an interest in these opportunities during residency training among Otolaryngology residents that is not reflected in availability within training programs. This suggests the need for development of humanitarian outreach exposure through global health experiences during surgical residency training.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-10-2021

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Annals of Global Health, v. 87, issue 1.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

http://doi.org/10.5334/aogh.3283

Funding Information

The authors would like to recognize the support of the Yale Department of Otolaryngology, the Hecht-Albert Global Health Pilot Innovation Award for Junior Faculty at Yale University, and the Fogarty International Center Global Health Equity Scholars Program at the National Institute of Health award number D43TW010540.

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