Teaching internal medicine residents about medical problems in pregnancy

When they became aware that many of their internal medicine residents were not being routinely exposed to a representative range of medical illnesses in pregnancy, the authors set out to develop and implement a brief practical curriculum on the medical problems of pregnancy. They began with a retrospective chart review of 562 consultations with pregnant women and used their findings to develop nine 15-minute lectures that covered a majority of the concepts essential to the care of the medically compromised pregnant woman. Topics included hypertension in pregnancy, the febrile pregnant woman, and renal disease in pregnancy. The authors also created a learner handout, a teaching script, teaching cases, and a bibliography for each lecture. Residents have responded well to the curriculum, and their mean pre- and posttext scores have shown that the lectures improved their knowledge of obstetric medicine. This brief-lecture format may be adapted to other special topics in residency training and readily integrated into already-crowded training schedules.