Emergency medicine: a unique opportunity for medical students.

Abstract

In many ways, a rotation in Emergency Medicine is fundamentally well suited for the training of medical students. Because Emergency Physicians normally provide episodic care, in distinction to continuity care as do primary care specialties, we are presented with the greatest number of “undifferentiated patients” seen in any medical field. In other words, our patients present to us without a known diagnosis. This allows the student along with the attending to evaluate “fresh” patients multiple times a day to arrive at their own diagnoses. Not only will this occur during each shift, but in a busy Emergency Department like ours, this will occur from 100-150 times a day. This makes the Emergency Department a veritable learning and skills laboratory of patient’s complaints, diagnoses, and procedures. Emergency Medicine is also a specialty where the student works directly with an attending physician who is board certified in Emergency Medicine 24 hours a day who is always present and available to teach. You receive almost instantaneous evaluation and feedback by a faculty member. Due to the rapid turnover of patients, students do not have a long wait to see if their initial diagnosis or interventions are correct. Even though we, in Emergency Medicine are under time pressure from a clinical perspective, the appropriateness of the diagnosis or intervention is usually immediately apparent within the confines of the shift, as most problems are either solved or resolved before the patient is discharged from the Emergency Department or admitted to the hospital. This immediate and timely feedback is an incredibly powerful tool for medical education.