Implementing a Climate Health Education Curriculum for Emergency Medicine Trainees and Faculty
Source: PubMed Central Open Access, NCBI / U.S. National Library of Medicine
As climate-related health impacts intensify, emergency physicians (EP) increasingly encounter patients whose conditions are influenced by environmental change. To provide care for climate- vulnerable patients in the emergency department (ED), EPs should be educated on the impacts of climate change. The goal of our intervention was to provide a structured climate health educational curriculum to attending physicians, residents, and medical students and assess the perceived effectiveness of the curriculum. A longitudinal climate health curriculum was delivered in a four-part lecture series over the course of three months to medical students, postgraduate year 1–3 emergency medicine residents, and academic emergency attending physicians. We measured learners’ perceived knowledge pre- and post-curriculum with surveys assessing four core areas: 1) climate change topics; 2) climate impacts on human health; 3) confidence in treating medical conditions exacerbated by climate change; and 4) climate change solutions. At the completion of the three-month curriculum, the learners reported a statistically significant improvement in perceived level of knowledge in overall climate health topics in 87.5% (28/32 concepts with< .05) of concepts assessed during the climate health education curriculum. Specifically, learners reported a perceived knowledge improvement in concepts of general climate change (6/6 topics,< .05), impacts on human health (7/8 topics,< .05), confidence in treating medic
Abstract
As climate-related health impacts intensify, emergency physicians (EP) increasingly encounter patients whose conditions are influenced by environmental change. To provide care for climate- vulnerable patients in the emergency department (ED), EPs should be educated on the impacts of climate change. The goal of our intervention was to provide a structured climate health educational curriculum to attending physicians, residents, and medical students and assess the perceived effectiveness of the curriculum. A longitudinal climate health curriculum was delivered in a four-part lecture series over the course of three months to medical students, postgraduate year 1–3 emergency medicine residents, and academic emergency attending physicians. We measured learners’ perceived knowledge pre- and post-curriculum with surveys assessing four core areas: 1) climate change topics; 2) climate impacts on human health; 3) confidence in treating medical conditions exacerbated by climate change; and 4) climate change solutions. At the completion of the three-month curriculum, the learners reported a statistically significant improvement in perceived level of knowledge in overall climate health topics in 87.5% (28/32 concepts with< .05) of concepts assessed during the climate health education curriculum. Specifically, learners reported a perceived knowledge improvement in concepts of general climate change (6/6 topics,< .05), impacts on human health (7/8 topics,< .05), confidence in treating medical conditions exacerbated by climate change (8/9 topics,< .05), and knowledge of climate solutions (7/9 topics,< .05). Overall, learners reported a higher median likelihood of implementing individual climate solutions after the conclusion of the climate health education curriculum, although this was not statistically significant (5.0 vs 7.0,= .073). Our model introduces the concept of a longitudinal, lecture-based climate change curriculum to assist in educating resident learners in evidence-based climate health knowledge, assist in preparing EPs to better treat climate-vulnerable patient populations, and share climate solutions.