Residency Education

In the United States, nearly half of pregnancies are unintended, and 40 % of these unintended pregnancies end in abortion.1 As a result, family physicians, who often make the diagnosis of pregnancy for their female patients, should be knowledgeable about women’s pregnancy options, including abortion. The Residency Review Committee (RRC) requires that family medicine residents learn to provide options counseling for women with unintended pregnancies, stating that, “All residents must be trained to competen-cy in…options counseling for unintended pregnancy.”2 We hypothesized that observing abortion procedures might benefit residents in areas that would be helpful for providing accurate and nonjudgmental options counseling for unintended pregnancy