Sleep medicine exposure offered by United States residency training programs

To understand the sleep medicine educational exposure among parent specialties of sleep medicine fellowships, we conducted an online survey among Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education-approved training programs.

Target respondents were program directors of family medicine, otolaryngology, psychiatry, neurology, pediatrics, and pulmonary and critical care training programs in the United States. The survey was based on the Sleep Education Survey, a peer-reviewed, published survey created by the American Academy of Neurology Sleep Section. The modified 18-question survey was emailed via Survey Monkey per published methods totaling 3 requests approximately 1 week apart in January 2017.

A total of 1228 programs were contacted, and 479 responses were received for an overall response rate of 39%. Some programs in every specialty group offered a sleep medicine elective or a required rotation to trainees. Pulmonary and critical care and neurology reported the highest percentages of sleep medicine rotation as an option for housestaff (85.7% and 90.8%, respectively), and pulmonary and critical care had the highest portion of programs indicating a rotation requirement (75.4%). Teaching format was a mixture of didactic lectures, sleep center/laboratory exposure, and case reports, with lectures being the most common format. Didactics averaged 4.75 h/y. Few programs reported trainees subsequently pursuing sleep medicine fellowship (<10% produced a fellow over 5 years), and even fewer reported having a trainee who pursued grant funding for sleep-related research over 5 years.

There is wide variability and overall low exposure to sleep medicine education among United States "parent" Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education training programs whose medical boards offer sleep medicine certification.