Intern Preparedness Curriculum: A comprehensive curriculum to prepare emergency medicine interns for residency
Correspondence should be addressed to Nur-Ain Nadir, MD, MHPE at nurainnadir@yahoo.com
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21980/J8C04H
ABSTRACT:
Audience:
This curriculum was created for emergency medicine interns to teach clinical reasoning, communication, presentation, documentation and procedural skills.
Introduction:
Interns start their emergency medicine (EM) residencies with a wide range of pre-residency experiences. This heterogeneity of training prior to internship makes it difficult for faculty to ensure that residents are prepared for patient care upon starting residency training. In addition, many interns have taken time off from emergency-focused clinical care in the months before starting residency. This lapse in patient exposure may contribute to the knowledge gaps and lack of preparedness among incoming interns. At our institution, we identified the need for a comprehensive curriculum targeting these skills to prepare interns prior to their first clinical shift. To address this need we created a specific intern preparedness curriculum comprised of distinct didactic and simulation sessions that range from standardized patient in situ simulation to procedure-based skills laboratories.
Aims/Goals:
The primary goal of this curriculum is to teach EM interns critical thinking; clinical decision making; and presentation, communication, documentation and procedural skills. The secondary goal is to identify interns who might not be performing at the expected level for potential early intervention. In addition, we wanted to ensure that all interns have achieved Level 1 milestones in the patient care, systems-based practices, and interpersonal and communication competencies.
Methods:
The educational strategies used in this curriculum include a combination of pre-learning offered through Free Open Access to Medical (FOAM) education podcasts, videos, and blogs as well as pre-assigned readings, followed by didactics, procedure laboratories and an in-situ simulation exercise. Learners are assessed formatively, and both previously-validated and novel checklists are used to guide assessment. Sources for each checklist can be found in their respective footers. Simulation cases are available in their respective supplemental folders. Simulation cases were deployed in situ in a portion of the emergency department to enhance fidelity and expose learners to the workplace, patient flow, and systems dynamics.
Length of Curriculum:
The curriculum is intended to be administered in three distinct sessions (Wound & Burn Day, Procedure Day, “Day in the Life”), each lasting 5-8 hours. The sessions are scheduled during the 10-day orientation period that precedes the first clinical block for our interns. In order to allow learners sufficient time to review asynchronous pre-learning material, the sessions are generally scheduled towards the end of the orientation period.
Topics:
Clinical Decision making, communication skills, non-technical skills, intern orientation, procedural skills, in situ simulation, documentation skills.
