Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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To assess the potential actions of medical school deans, graduate medical education (GME) committee chairs, and hospital chief executive officers (CEOs) regarding future funding reductions for residency training. Specifically, institutions with emergency medicine (EM) residencies were surveyed to see whether EM training was disproportionally at risk for reductions. ⋯ In the setting of anticipated residency cuts, favored proportional reductions in specialty residencies would likely affect EM training. However, most GME decision makers with an existing EM residency program do not consider the EM residency a top choice to be reduced or eliminated.
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An SAEM national task force previously concluded that academic departments and residencies in emergency medicine (EM) had preferentially developed outside of the academic mainstream. This study was designed to determine whether EM has made significant inroads into academic medical centers over the past 5 years. ⋯ EM has made substantial inroads into academic medical centers over the past 5 years. This is reflected in quantitatively and statistically significant increases in academic departments and university-hospital residency programs, both occurring largely within institutions whose academic rankings place them among the upper half of all LCME-accredited medical schools.
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To mathematically model the supply of and demand for emergency physicians (EPs) under different workforce conditions. ⋯ The number of EM residency positions should not be decreased during any restructuring of the U.S. health care system. EM is likely to remain a specialty in which the supply of board-certified EPs will not meet the demand, even at present levels of EM residency output, for the next several decades.
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To determine whether the institution of a structured board review program is associated with improved in-service examination scores by residents at an emergency medicine (EM) residency program. ⋯ In this study, EM-1 in-service scores improved in association with the institution of a structured board review program. This formalized didactic program may increase the knowledge base and test performance of EM-1 residents. A favorable effect on EM-2 and EM-3 resident scores was not seen.
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To examine the pattern of nontrauma cranial CT use in an urban ED, to identify the rate of significant CT abnormalities in this setting, and to develop criteria for restricting the ordering of CT scans. ⋯ Clinically significant CT abnormalities were uncommon in this study population, suggesting that current criteria for ordering nontrauma cranial CT scans may be too liberal. In this study, a set of clinical criteria was derived that may be useful at separating patients into high- and low-risk categories for clinically significant cranial CT abnormalities. Before these results are applied clinically, these criteria should be validated in larger, prospective studies.