As in 2020, in 2021 the COVID-19 restrictions continued to negatively impact MSFC’s capacity to administer the Abortion Training Funding Programs—the Reproductive Health Externship (RHE) for medical students and the Training to Competence Externship (TCE) for residents. Despite many disruptions caused by travel restrictions and other safety considerations, a total of 41 medical students participated in the RHE and 13 residents completed the TCE program. This volume of participation is on par with 2020.
These 54 participants came from 41 schools and training programs, and were able to schedule their externship placement at one of the 28 host facilities that accepted participants this year.
Here is what some of the participants said after completing their training experience:
Program Impact
To evaluate the outcomes of these programs we ask applicants to complete a survey before and after their training, here are some of the highlights from 2021’s evaluation.
Program participants were asked to indicate how knowledgeable they felt about key abortion provision and reproductive health topics, on both the pre- and post-externship surveys. Results show an increase towards “very knowledgeable” on all categories:
Intention to Provide Abortion Services
Another topic we explored among our participants was their intention to provide medical and/or surgical abortion services in their future practice. Although this was already high on the pre-externship survey, we see a slight increase on intention to provide on the post-survey results.
Additional Training
On the post-RHE survey, participants were asked, on a scale of 1 through 5—with 1 being not likely and 5 being very likely—, how likely were they to pursue additional abortion training? The average response was 4.7.
