The western journal of emergency medicine
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To obtain a residency match, medical students entering emergency medicine (EM) must complete away rotations, submit a number of lengthy applications, and travel to multiple programs to interview. The expenses incurred acquiring this residency position are burdensome, but there is little specialty-specific data estimating it. We sought to quantify the actual cost spent by medical students applying to EM residency programs by surveying students as they attended a residency interview. ⋯ Due to multiple factors, the costs of securing an EM residency spot can be expensive. By understanding the components that are driving this trend, we hope that the academic EM community can explore avenues to help curtail these costs.
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Cardiac tamponade is a life-threatening emergency for which pericardiocentesis may be required. Real-time bedside ultrasound has obviated the need for routine blind procedures in cardiac arrest, and the number of pericardiocenteses being performed has declined. Despite this fact, pericardiocentesis remains an essential skill in emergency medicine. ⋯ Additionally, 100% of the students were successful at performing the procedure using our model. In simulation, our model provided both palpable and ultrasound landmarks and held up to several months of repeated use. It was less expensive than commercial models ($200 vs up to $16,500) while being more realistic in simulation than other described "do-it-yourself models." This model can be easily replicated to teach the necessary skill of pericardiocentesis.
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Emergency medicine (EM) residency programs may be 36 or 48 months in length. The Residency Review Committee for EM requires that 48-month programs provide educational justification for the additional 12 months. We developed additional milestones that EM training programs might use to assess outcomes in domains that meet this accreditation requirement. This study aims to assess for content validity of these supplemental milestones using a similar methodology to that of the original EM Milestones validation study. ⋯ Six additional subcompetencies were generated and assessed for content validity using the same methodology as was used to validate the current EM Milestones. These optional milestones may serve as an additional set of assessment tools that will allow EM residency programs to report these additional educational outcomes using a familiar milestone rubric.
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Multicenter Study
Characteristics of Real-Time, Non-Critical Incident Debriefing Practices in the Emergency Department.
Benefits of post-simulation debriefings as an educational and feedback tool have been widely accepted for nearly a decade. Real-time, non-critical incident debriefing is similar to post-simulation debriefing; however, data on its practice in academic emergency departments (ED), is limited. Although tools such as TeamSTEPPS® (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety) suggest debriefing after complicated medical situations, they do not teach debriefing skills suited to this purpose. Anecdotal evidence suggests that real-time debriefings (or non-critical incident debriefings) do in fact occur in academic EDs;, however, limited research has been performed on this subject. The objective of this study was to characterize real-time, non-critical incident debriefing practices in emergency medicine (EM). ⋯ This survey regarding the practice of real-time, non-critical incident debriefings in four major academic EM programs within New York City sheds light on three major, pertinent points: 1) real-time, non-critical incident debriefing definitely occurs in academic emergency practice; 2) in general, real-time debriefing is perceived to be of some value with respect to education, systems and performance improvement; 3) although it is practiced by clinicians, most report no formal training in actual debriefing techniques. Further study is needed to clarify actual benefits of real-time/non-critical incident debriefing as well as details on potential pitfalls of this practice and recommendations for best practices for use.
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Comparative Study
Differences in Self-expression Reflect Formal Evaluation in a Fourth-year Emergency Medicine Clerkship.
Medical schools have begun to incorporate self-reflection exercises into their curricula, with the belief that these exercises help students master the material more deeply and perform better. Reflection may be a potential learning tool for emergency medicine (EM), but there are few data supporting this hypothesis. The authors evaluated the relationship between a linguistic marker of the degree of reflection after a student's shift in an emergency department and that student's clerkship performance. ⋯ Students who reflected more frequently received a higher grade in an EM clerkship for fourth-year medical students. The number of words in each reflection was not significantly correlated with grade performance. The most common words and phrases students wrote were associated with learning and managing patients.