Current Issue: Volume 19 Issue 1

Jack of All Trades, Masters of One?

Merritt, MD, et al.

Sharing common language and interests, learned through didactic work and network-building, promotes a connection to the broader community of educators, both within and beyond emergency medicine.

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The Flipped Journal Club

Bounds, MD, et al.

We sought to design an innovative “flipped journal club” to achieve greater effectiveness in meeting goals and objectives among residents and faculty.

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Fantastic Learning Moments and Where to Find Them

Sheng, MD, et al.

We created a novel, web-based educational tool called “Learning Moment” (LM) to foster experiential learning among our learners. We used data captured by LM as a research database to determine where learning experiences were occuring within our emergency department (ED).

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The National Clinical Assessment Tool for Medical Students in the Emergency Department (NCAT-EM)

Jung, MD, et al.

A two-day national consensus conference was held in March 2016 in the Clerkship Directors in Emergency Medicine (CDEM) track at the Council of Residency Directors in Emergency Medicine (CORD) Academic Assembly in Nashville, TN. The goal of this conference was to standardize assessment practices and to create a national clinical assessment tool for use in EM clerkships across the country.

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Flipping the Classroom in Medical Student Education: Does Priming Work?

Rose, MD, et al.

The emergency medicine (EM) clerkship curriculum at Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center includes monthly lectures on pediatric fever and shortness of breath (SOB). This educational innovation evaluated if learning could be enhanced by “priming” the students with educational online videos prior to an in-class session.

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Emergency Medicine Residency Applicant Characteristics Associated with Measured Adverse Outcomes During Residency

Bohrer-Clancy, MD, et al.

Negative outcomes in emergency medicine (EM) programs use a disproportionate amount of educational resources to the detriment of other residents. We sought to determine if any applicant characteristics identifiable during the selection process are associated with negative outcomes during residency. Primary analysis consisted of looking at the association of each of the descriptors including resident characteristics and events during residency with a composite measure of negative outcomes. Components of the negative outcome composite were any formal remediation, failure to complete residency, or extension of residency.

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A Randomized Trial of SMART Goal Enhanced Debriefing after Simulation to Promote Educational Actions

Aghera, MD, et al.

Our objective was to integrate formal learning goal generation, using the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound), into standard debriefing processes (i.e., “SMART Goal Enhanced Debriefing”) and subsequently measure the impact on the development of learning goals and execution of educational actions. This was a prospective multicenter randomized controlled study of 80 emergency medicine residents at three academic hospitals comparing the effectiveness of SMART Goal Enhanced Debriefing to a standard debriefing.

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Do End-of-Rotation and End-of-Shift Assessments Inform Clinical Competency Committees’ (CCC) Decisions?

Regan, MD, et al.

The residency program is an urban academic four-year emergency medicine residency with 48 residents. After their shifts in the emergency department (ED), residents handed out EOS assessment forms asking about individual milestones from 15 subcompetencies to supervising physicians, as well as triggered electronic EOR-doctor (EORd) assessments to supervising doctors and EOR-nurse (EORn) to nurses they had worked with after each two-week ED block.

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Experience Within the Emergency Department and Improved Productivity for First-Year Residents in Emergency Medicine and Other Specialties

Joseph, MD, MS, et al.

This was a retrospective cohort study, conducted in an urban academic hospital ED, with a three-year EM training program in which first-year residents see new patients ad l
ibitum. We evaluated resident shifts for the total number of new patients seen. We constructed a generalized estimating equation to predict productivity, defined as the number of new patients seen per shift, as a function of the week of the academic year, the number of weeks spent in the ED, and their interaction. Off-service residents’ productivity in the ED was analyzed in a secondary analysis.

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Emergency Medicine Student End-of-Rotation Examinations: Where Are We Now?

Miller, MD, et al.

This review is a descriptive summary of the development of these examinations and their relevant usage and performance data. In particular, we describe how examination content was edited to affect desired changes in examination performance data and offer a model for educators seeking to develop their own examinations.

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Development of a Case-based Reading Curriculum and Its Effect on Resident Reading

Messman, MD, et al.

Textbook reading plays a foundational role in a resident’s knowledge base. Many residency programs place residents on identical reading schedules, regardless of the clinical work or rotation the resident is doing. We sought to develop a reading curriculum that takes into account the clinical work a resident is doing so their reading curriculum corresponds with their clinical work. Preliminary data suggests an increased amount of resident reading and an increased interest in reading as a result of this change to their reading curriculum.

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Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAM) Resources in a Team-Based Learning Educational Series

Fallon, MD, et al.

We sought to develop an educational intervention whereby residents could review FOAM resources while maintaining faculty oversight. We created a novel curriculum pairing FOAM from the Academic Life in Emergence Medicine (ALiEM) Approved Instructional Resources (Air) series with a team-based learning (TBL) format. Residents have an opportunity to engage with FOAM in a structured setting with faculty input on possible practice changes. This series has been well-received by residents and appears to have increased engagement with core content material.

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Bringing the Flipped Classroom to Day 1: A Novel Didactic Curriculum for Emergency Medicine Intern Orientation

Barrie, MD, et al.

Our orientation program is designed to bridge the gap between undergraduate and graduate medical education by ensuring that all learners demonstrate competency on Level 1 Milestones, including medical knowledge (MK). To teach interns core medical knowledge in EM, we reformulated orientation using the flipped-classroom model by replacing lectures with small group, case-based discussions. Interns demonstrated improvement in medical knowledge through higher scores on a posttest. Evaluation survey results were also favorable for the flipped-classroom teaching format.

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Using Medical Student Quality Improvement Projects to Promote Evidence-Based Care in the Emergency Department

Manning, BS, et al.

We set out to determine the feasibility of using third-year medical students’ action learning projects (QI projects) to expedite implementation of evidence-based pathways for three common patient diagnoses in the ED setting as well as develop a model for promoting bidirectional alignment at an institutional level. We further evaluated clinician perspectives on using medical students at the forefront of QI pathway development.

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Contact Information

WestJEM/ Department of Emergency Medicine
UC Irvine Health

3800 W Chapman Ave Ste 3200
Orange, CA 92868, USA
Phone: 1-714-456-6389
Email: editor@westjem.org

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WestJEM
ISSN: 1936-900X
e-ISSN: 1936-9018

CPC-EM
ISSN: 2474-252X

Our Philosophy

Emergency Medicine is a specialty which closely reflects societal challenges and consequences of public policy decisions. The emergency department specifically deals with social injustice, health and economic disparities, violence, substance abuse, and disaster preparedness and response. This journal focuses on how emergency care affects the health of the community and population, and conversely, how these societal challenges affect the composition of the patient population who seek care in the emergency department. The development of better systems to provide emergency care, including technology solutions, is critical to enhancing population health.