Location: HealthEast- St. Joseph’s Hospital

Year of Training: EM2, EM3

Educational goals:

Develop competency to practice in a community emergency department environment.  This includes aspects unique to community emergency medicine practice such as communicating with staff consultants and having a limited number of physicians in the Emergency Department.

Educational objectives:

1. Demonstrate appropriate knowledge and skills to resuscitate patients with acute life-threatening emergencies.
2. Demonstrate appropriate knowledge and skills to treat patients with urgent or acute medical or surgical problems.
3. Demonstrate facility with procedural skills used in caring for patients with emergent or urgent medical or surgical problems.
4. Develop competency to practice in an academic emergency department environment.
5. Participate in didactic conferences through case presentations and/or didactic lectures.
6. Participate in patient transfer calls and EMS base-station demands.

Description of clinical experiences:

Residents have the opportunity to see all types of patients.  They are supervised by attending staff.  They manage patients primarily. Clinical duties at St. Joseph’s Hospital should average 40 clinical hours per week.  Residents may take vacation or may be pulled for back-up from this rotation.

Description of didactic experiences:

A minimum of five hours of didactic conferences is held each week.  All residents are excused from clinical duties for conferences and are expected to attend.

Evaluation process:

Residents receive written evaluations after completing rotation to the ED.  They are evaluated on their knowledge base, facility to perform procedural skills as appropriate for their level of training and professional attitudes.  Residents are responsible for keeping track of all procedures performed.  These logbooks are reviewed at least twice a year by the Program Director.  Annual oral examinations, the national in-service examination, and case presentations at conference are also used to evaluate residents.

Feedback mechanisms:

The faculty on duty in the Emergency Department provides immediate feedback.  Such feedback is considered most important in the resident’s education.  Several times during the year residents meet with their preceptors.  In addition, the Program Director meets with each resident twice each year to review the department’s evaluation of the resident.