What You Didn’t Learn in Residency: A Collective Curriculum for New Academic EM Faculty and Fellows
Correspondence should be addressed to Mary Westergaard, MD at mcwester@medicine.wisc.edu
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21980/J8WP9Z
ABSTRACT:
Audience and Type of Curriculum:
This curriculum is designed for emergency medicine fellows and first-year junior faculty. The curriculum covers core topics related to academic and professional success for an early career faculty member.
Length of Curriculum:
The curriculum is designed as quarterly sessions over the course of one academic year.
Introduction:
An increasing number of emergency medicine graduates are pursuing fellowship after completion of residency.1 Fellowship can be challenging as newly minted graduates begin to explore their academic niche, refine their clinical practice, and define their personal and professional spheres. We propose a structured curriculum to help guide fellows and new faculty to mitigate these challenges.
Educational Goals:
The aim of this curriculum is to develop relevant skills to promote academic success for fellows and first-year faculty at the start of their academic career and which could be completed during a one-year training timeline. We included topics relevant to all fellow and new faculty’s expected personal and professional journey during this first year, including time management, academic productivity, resilience/wellness, and developing a national reputation.
Educational Methods:
The educational strategies used in this curriculum consist primarily of lecture seminars. There is one short individual activity associated with the lectures and one small group discussion.
Research Methods:
The course was assessed with pre- and post-test surveys following each lecture. Surveys assessed participants’ reaction, learning, and behavior for each session. Evaluations were completed based on a 5-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree).
Results:
Fifteen participants attended the seminar series encompassing fellows and first-year faculty/post-fellows from ten different fellowship subspecialities. Average pre-assessment scores were low for many of the self-reported skills and confidence throughout the seminar series. Overall, participants reported increased confidence on the post-test for each of the seminar topics. In addition, participants reported that they learned new skills and planned to use the new ideas presented. All participants reported they would recommend these seminars to someone else on their same career path.
Discussion:
Overall, participants reported increased confidence, new skills, and plans to use the ideas presented in the seminar series. The content appears applicable to this learner set since all reported they would recommend the series to others on their career path.
In conclusion, we believe our seminar series will build skills for fellows and first-year faculty which will promote academic success.
Topics:
Academic success, professional development, early career development.
