The Resident Experience of an Obesity-Focused Home Visiting Curriculum

The prevalence of obesity in the USA has risen to 39.8% of adults and 18.5% of children, yet there has not been a compensatory rise in residency training to reflect this epidemic.

To examine pediatric residents' lived experiences of completing a novel home visitation curriculum for children with obesity in resource-poor areas of Washington, DC.

Pediatric residents completed a home visiting curriculum consisting of four modules followed by two home visits to families with a child struggling with obesity. Within 2 weeks of completing the curriculum, individual interviews were conducted with participants about their experience. Inductive coding was used to analyze the data, followed by clustering and theming.

Saturation was reached after individual interviews with 13 residents between 2013 and 2015. Five themes emerged describing the residents' experiences: (1) enhanced understanding of home and community life, (2) awareness of personal biases and assumptions, (3) challenges of losing control and not being intrusive, (4) deeper relationship and enhanced empathy with patient and family, and (5) changes in delivery of care.

The findings from this study suggest that an obesity-focused home visiting curriculum may provide residents with a deeper understanding of social determinants of obesity and the opportunity to gain other necessary skills that may help them better care for individuals with obesity.