Educating Internal Medicine Residents About Breast Health Using a Jigsaw Teaching Strategy: An Interactive Curriculum Module

Introduction Education in women's health is lacking in internal medicine (IM) residency training despite women making up half the population. With increasing recognition of women's unique health care needs and recent guideline updates for breast cancer (BC) screening, we utilized an interactive teaching strategy, the Jigsaw Teaching Strategy (JTS), to increase resident comfort with BC screening at 2 large New York (NY) IM residency programs. Methods One hundred eighty-six IM residents across 2 residency programs participated in a one-hour JTS session in 2024. JTS is a cooperative teaching technique that assigns each learner to become an "expert" on one topic and then brings learners together in mixed groups to teach their individual topics to one another. Four cases were developed to cover BC guidelines and BC risk assessment across all ages. Resident pre- and postsession surveys were conducted to assess residents' comfort and knowledge of this topic. Results Response rates for the pre- and postsession survey were 52% (96/186) and 38% (72/186), respectively. Residents' comfort level with breast imaging improved (presession mean = 2.86 [SD = 0.82], postsession mean = 4.01 [SD = 0.72], P < .001). Resident comfort with performing BC risk stratification improved (presession mean = 2.44 (SD = 0.81), postsession mean = 3.99 (SD = 0.70), P < .001). Post session, 98% of the residents correctly identified the recommended age(s) to begin screening, and 98% correctly identified first-line imaging modality. Discussion The implementation of JTS was feasible and well received by residents, improving their self-reported comfort with BC screening and risk assessment.