Ethics education in complex family planning fellowship programs

We aimed to identify Complex Family Planning (CFP) fellowship programs’ needs in preparing fellows for ethically challenging situations. An anonymous paper survey was distributed to CFP Program Directors and Associate Program Directors at the 2022 Society of Family Planning Annual Conference. Data was reviewed in aggregate and analyzed using Redcap software using descriptive statistics. Thirty-one of 36 potential participants completed surveys (86%). Respondents felt their fellows were “somewhat” (74.2%) or “very” (25.8%) prepared to address ethical challenges. Most fellowship education occurs through informal channels and clinical work. Overall, participants indicated that case-based learning facilitator materials, integrated case-based and lecture material, and lecture-based didactic slides would be most useful to augment ethics education. CFP program leadership expressed confidence in fellows' ethics education related to professionalism and communication skills. Most fellowship education currently occurs through informal channels and clinical work. Respondents reported that their most desired resources would be more formal curricular tools for ethics education, demonstrating a need for a more formalized curriculum, which would especially aid programs with fewer faculty with ethics expertise.