Sexual Well-being Among Medical Residents at a Community-Based Academic Institution

Introduction: Medical residency training is demanding, with challenging workloads, long hours, and excessive stress that impact residents’ physical, mental, and emotional health. Although the concept of health and wellness in residency has become more widespread across programs, few studies have explored the sexual health of medical residents during training. Methods: To better understand the current state of sexual health and well-being of resident physicians, physicians in training across Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Family Medicine, OB/GYN, Transitional Year, and General Surgery completed anonymous surveys that incorporated validated questionnaires, including the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF) and the Index of Premature Ejaculation (IPE) for males, and the female Sexual Function Inventory (FSFI) for females. Results: A total of 69 out of the potential 100 respondents completed the survey. Most respondents (63.8%) reported a negative impact of medical residency training on their sexual wellness, with married respondents experiencing more dissatisfaction than single respondents (77.8% versus 46.7%; p = 0.02). Higher satisfaction with frequency of intercourse was seen among residents who work less than 60 hours per week (35.7% versus 12.5%; p = 0.02). Moreover, cis males endorsed a lesser impact of sexual wellness on relationship satisfaction compared to cis females (6.9% versus 33.3%; p = 0.01). Compared to their heterosexual counterparts, non-heterosexual respondents reported a larger impact of sexual well-being on relationship satisfaction (75.0% versus 15.5%; p = 0.001). Single respondents displayed greater dissatisfaction (30.0%) with the number and/or type of sexual partners than their counterparts who were married (0.0%; p \u3c 0.001) or in committed relationships (0.0%; p = 0.001). Sexually inactive respondents reported little impact of their sexual well-being on work performance (37.5% versus 0.0%; p = 0.004) compared to their sexually active colleagues, but a higher level of dissatisfaction with the frequency of intercourse (75.0% versus 12.3%; p = 0.007). Conclusion: Recent studies have demonstrated negative impacts of medical training on physical, emotional, and mental well-being. This study demonstrates additional negative impacts on sexual well-being. Multi-institutional, large cohort studies are needed to further assess physician in-training sexual wellness and develop appropriate interventions

Experience with and Perception of Research Among First Year Osteopathic Medical Students

There are limited data regarding the level of research experience and/or interest among osteopathic medical students despite a rapidly increasing enrollment and expansion of the number of osteopathic medical schools. A 2016 study of first year osteopathic medical students at WesternU/COMP and WesternU/COMP-NW indicated that 81% of respondents had prior research experience and 75% were either currently doing research or were interested in doing research during medical school. In the present study, we extended that survey to Marian University in order to determine the level of research experience and interest among first-year osteopathic medical students. Based on a response rate of 41%, an overwhelming majority of respondents reported prior research experience (\u3e80%), with 13% of those students having garnered peer-reviewed publication(s). This is consistent with a strong perception of research being valuable, with 96.92% indicating some level of importance and 27.69% indicating very or extremely important. Interestingly, fewer respondents (53.34%) are either currently participating in research or affirmed interest in performing research during medical school, with the highest level of interest in clinical research (32.37%) followed by basic science (20.23%). Regarding incentives that might encourage participation in research, respondents prefer monetary compensation (40.19%) and/or extra credit in courses (39.25%). Reported barriers to performing research include possible negative impact on coursework (65.93%) and preference for other extracurricular activities (23.08%). Although a majority of the students (81.54%) reported awareness that research opportunities are available at MU-COM, fewer (50.79%) were aware of whether opportunities exist in their specific field of interest. Our findings indicate a strong positive perception of research among MU-COM students and highlight opportunities for improved communication of availability and enhancement of the research environment through incentivization and/or removal of perceived barriers

The Automated Discovery of Implied Causation Statements in Medical Research Literature: The Text-based Causation Signal caused by

The goal of the IMPLICATION project is to provide a tool that will keep the already busy Physicians or Scientists up to date on the latest discoveries, in their respective specialties by providing a faster way to access the latest material. The tool will automatically process text and extract from it critical information known as causation statements. These statements are identified with the help of causation signals, which are found in almost everything we read. A causation signal is a word or a phrase that links together the cause and the effect in a statement, and indicates the presence of causation in text. In this study, the causation signal caused by was identified in articles from PubMed. Using a pre-existing software tool, 300 abstracts were obtained from the PubMed database. The first fifty abstracts were used to identify the characteristics of causation statements and formulate the antecedent/consequent extraction rules, known as the pseudo-code extraction algorithm. To construct the algorithm, we used the process of iterative refinement: for each causation statement, the position of the signal caused by with respect to the antecedent and consequent was noted, which modified the pseudo-code, each time exceptions to the statement were observed. The common pattern observed in the initial set of statements was that the consequent occurred upstream of the signal while the antecedent occurred downstream of the signal. The pseudo-code extraction algorithm was tested on the rest of the abstracts to show its effectiveness. The algorithm correctly extracted the consequent 93.6% of the time and the antecedent 89.6% of the time. Using these results, the goal of identifying multiple chains of causation to provide Physicians and Scientists with accurate information quickly