Evaluation of a Whole Health-Lifestyle Medicine Curriculum for Physician Assistant Students: a Mixed Methods Analysis

Claire M Stauffer; Susan M McGlynn; David R Topor; Laura Fiore; Edward M Phillips

doi:10.1007/s40670-021-01460-2

Evaluation of a Whole Health-Lifestyle Medicine Curriculum for Physician Assistant Students: a Mixed Methods Analysis

Med Sci Educ. 2021 Nov 18;32(1):57-61. doi: 10.1007/s40670-021-01460-2. eCollection 2022 Feb.

Authors

Claire M Stauffer¹, Susan M McGlynn^{1

2}, David R Topor^{1

3}, Laura Fiore¹, Edward M Phillips^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA USA.
² Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA USA.
³ Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA USA.
⁴ Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA USA.

Abstract

There is increased urgency to train healthcare professionals in lifestyle medicine (LM) to mitigate the impact of lifestyle factors on chronic disease (Trilk et al. in Am J Prevent Medic. 2019:e169-e75, 2019; Polak et al. in Am J Lifestyle Med. 2015;9:361-7, 2015). This training addresses physical activity, nutrition, stress management, sleep hygiene, relationships, tobacco cessation (Lifestyle medicine in ACLM Home, 2020), and self-care. Several studies have evaluated the impact of this training on physician assistant (PA) students (Keyes and Gardner in Clin Teach. 2020, 2020; Phillips et al. Med Sci Educ. 1-5). The current paper extends previous quantitative findings from Phillips et al., 2021, revealing positive qualitative changes in PA student language and approach to clinical vignettes after completion of a novel Whole Health/lifestyle medicine (WH-LM) curriculum.

Keywords: Clinical vignettes; Curriculum; Health professions trainees; Lifestyle medicine; Medical education; Physician assistant (PA) student; Whole Health.