Family medicine residents are trained to care for the whole family, covering a wide range of health topics and challenges.

Thanks to Spartanburg Regional Foundation donors, Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System’s Family Medicine Residency Program is providing additional education on a topic that is affecting an increasing number of families.

“Until recently, eating disorders have largely been overlooked in the clinical education setting,” said Maggie Gainey, a licensed clinical psychologist and faculty member for the Family Medicine Residency program.

In 2023, Gainey and collaborating Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) faculty led two extensive eating disorder assessment and prevention training courses. Medical students at VCOM and family medicine residents at Spartanburg Regional who attended are now better equipped to discuss eating disorders with patients and families, and better prepared to spot symptoms, diagnose conditions and provide treatment.

Now the program is developing additional content for a mobile app that others will be able to access to complete further training and access additional resources on eating disorders, signs, statistics, symptoms and treatments. The long-term goal is for the app to provide a sustainable educational system for medical students and residents on eating disorder issues.

“We want to create a sustainable educational model with information and videos around mental health topics,” said Gainey. “There will be a whole section on training doctors about eating disorder issues. They don’t get very much by way of education about eating disorders in medical school or residency, so that’s part of the reason for this collaboration.” 

In-person trainings in 2023 involved an eating disorders expert, Dr. Timothy Brewerton, a child-adolescent-adult psychiatrist with the Medical University of South Carolina; Dr. Natalie Fadel, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at VCOM; and Dr. Alexis Stoner, the discipline chair for epidemiology, community and public health and preventive medicine at VCOM.

Through a video platform, videos were produced by Resiliency Technologies and made accessible to Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System employees through the Mindful Matters app.

The prevalence of eating disorders — from anorexia to binge-eating — has risen since the pandemic, according to Gainey.

“It is a real problem. With higher rates of anxiety, it has led to different behavioral issues,” she said. “Through conversations with parents, we became more acutely aware of how limited education was for medical students and residents around these issues.”

Through this training, more medical professions will be equipped to navigate hard conversations with patients.

“We are teaching medical professionals how to be more sensitive to those issues and know how to ask the right questions that will allow someone to feel safe talking about those things,” said Gainey. “It’s not easy, but this helps promote the overall wellness and health for a person.”