Teaching Medical Students About Adoption and Foster Care

This article reports that an elective training for medical students regarding the ways that adoption and foster care may affect patients they will see in their future medical practice is effective, perceived by students to be a valuable experience, and may contribute to good medical practice. As a follow-up to recommendations from a Massachusetts Task Force on Adoption-which identified the need to promote educational programs on adoption and foster careweekly skills-building classes were designed to increase medical students' awareness of how frequently adoption and foster care may play a role in patients' lives. This course aims to increase students' ability to communicate with, and analyze and interpret information from members of adoption and/or foster care triads through a series of presentations by adoption and foster care experts, who include doctors with specialties in international adoption medicine, behavioral health issues of children who were adopted, specialized care for children in foster care, and family medical practice with expertise in the area of nondirective counseling; adoptive parents and people who were adopted; parents who have made adoption plans for their children; and foster parents. In addition, the classes also encourage medical students to reflect on their own beliefs and assumptions about adoption and foster care.