• Ronald S Benenson and Marc L Pollack.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, York Hospital, York, PA 17405, USA. rbenenson@wellspan.org
• Acad Emerg Med. 2003 Mar 1;10(3):219-23.

UnlabelledEmergency physicians commonly perform death notifications. Physician training in death notification has been limited. Resident physicians are rarely evaluated in their performance of death notifications.ObjectiveTo evaluate death notification skills by direct observation of actual notifications performed by trained emergency medicine (EM) residents.MethodsThis was a prospective, observational study of EM resident death notification performance. EM residents received training and then were directly observed and evaluated by trained evaluators during actual death notifications in a 64,000-visit community teaching hospital emergency department.ResultsThere were 327 evaluations of 70 different EM residents. Overall performance evaluations were 55% excellent, 40% satisfactory, and 5% unsatisfactory. Third-year EM residents and female EM residents were more likely to be rated excellent.ConclusionsDeath notification is a skill that can be evaluated like other EM skills. Trained EM residents performed well in actual death notifications when directly observed and evaluated. Senior residents and female residents were more likely to be rated excellent.

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