Abstract
BackgroundEmergency departments (EDs) offer a variety of learning opportunities for undergraduate medical students. It is however, difficult to evaluate whether they are receiving recommended training during their emergency medicine (EM) clerkship without identifying their clinical activities. We aimed to evaluate the clinical exposure of the final year medical students at our College during their EM clerkship.MethodsThis is a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected student logbooks. 75 students rotated in a 4-week EM clerkship during 2015–2016. The students rotated in EDs of two hospitals. Each ED treats more than 120,000 cases annually. The students completed 12 eight-hours shifts. Presentations and procedures seen were compared with EM curriculum recommendations.ResultsFive thousand one hundred twenty-two patient presentations and 3246 procedures were recorded in the logbooks, an average (SD) of 68.3 (17.6) patients and 46.1 (14.0) procedures. None of the students encountered all ten recommended presentations. Two students (2.6%) logged all nine procedure categories of the EM curriculum.ConclusionRecommended presentations and procedures of the EM clerkship were not fully encountered by all our students. Different settings vary in the availability and type of patients and procedures. Each clinical clerkship should tailor their teaching methods based on the available learning opportunities.
Highlights
Emergency departments (EDs) offer a variety of learning opportunities for undergraduate medical students
Five thousand one hundred twenty-two patient presentations, and 3246 procedures were recorded in the logbooks of all students
Our study has shown that final year medical students encountered less patient presentations and procedures than those recommended by our clerkship curriculum
Summary
Emergency departments (EDs) offer a variety of learning opportunities for undergraduate medical students. It is difficult to evaluate whether they are receiving recommended training during their emergency medicine (EM) clerkship without identifying their clinical activities. We aimed to evaluate the clinical exposure of the final year medical students at our College during their EM clerkship. EM curriculum development started in the mid-1980s [2, 3] This curriculum was developed during the last 25 years and implemented in many medical schools. The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine and International Federation for Emergency Medicine are the three main associations which work on the development of medical school curricula [3, 4]. The last curriculum was published in 2010 by the Clerkship Directors
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