Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
-
To identify racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in the emergency department (ED) care for mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). ⋯ There are significant racial and ethnic but not gender disparities in ED care for mTBI. The causes of these disparities and the relationship between these disparities and post-mTBI outcome need to be examined.
-
African Americans with acute coronary syndromes receive cardiac catheterization less frequently than whites. The objective was to determine if such disparities extend to acute evaluation and non interventional treatment. ⋯ Racial disparities in acute chest pain management extend beyond cardiac catheterization. Poor compliance with recommended treatments for ACS may be an explanation.
-
Education is the means by which learning occurs and, thereby, behavior is changed. One means of improving health care disparities is changing the behavior and understanding of key personnel in academic health centers. These individuals influence policy and procedure, design and evaluate health systems, and define curricular standards for graduate and undergraduate medical education. ⋯ In addition to our responsibilities in educating emergency medicine residents, the emergency department also provides an ideal learning environment for medical students and other health care providers. The broad issue of disparities in emergency health care may be approached from a variety of directions. The Consensus Group on Education chose to focus on cultural competency education at several levels as a means of tangibly changing its status for both the immediate and long terms.
-
Multicenter Study
General competencies are intrinsic to emergency medicine training: a multicenter study.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has promulgated six areas called General Competencies (GCs) that residency programs are required to evaluate. The authors sought to determine if these domains were an intrinsic part of emergency medicine (EM) residency training by using a global assessment evaluation device. ⋯ EM residents from several residency programs showed statistically significant progressive acquisition of the ACGME GCs using a global assessment device. This suggests that the GCs may be an intrinsic component in the training of EM residents.