To survey residents in neurology and internal medicine (IM) across stages of their training in order to understand whether approaches to treating and counseling patients with headache differed across types of residencies and if these approaches changed with a greater number of training years.

 A 26 question survey was administered to all neurology and IM residents at single academic teaching hospital and examined: (1) approaches to abortive and prophylactic therapy for different types of headaches, and specific counseling topics (e.g., sleep). Participants responded to each statement with a 5-point Likert scale from “extremely likely” to “extremely unlikely”. The survey was distributed via Qualtrics to the neurology and IM residency listserv. It remained online for 5 weeks, during which reminder emails were sent. Descriptive analyses were then conducted using Qualtrics and Excel.

Neurology and IM trainees differ both in their likelihood to prescribing more headache specific abortive and prophylactic medications and counseling patients regarding non-pharmacological aspects of treatment. Headache didactics for training physicians should target IM trainees and be delivered earlier in PG training.