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Didactics

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Emergency Medicine resident education mandates the incorporation of a wide range of medical knowledge into the clinical setting. Didactic time serves as a shared base for such material, in addition to one’s individual learning.

  • Protected Time: 4-5 hours of protected conference time is held each week on Wednesday mornings from 8am to 1pm.
  • “Hybrid” format: We believe that all residents do not learn the same way. Therefore, we have adopted a "hybrid" learning format whereby multiple different teaching modalities are employed including:
    • Foundations of EM - we utilize the small-group and flipped classroom based Foundations of EM curriculum twice/block
    • Traditional lecture format
    • Interactive audience-response system based presentations
    • Case conferences
    • Simulation
    • Skills workshops
    • Flipped classroom methodologies
  • Modular curriculum: Core content is covered in a 4-week, modular format so that all content within the block have a consistent theme.  The curriculum is spread over an 2-year period so that all content repeated twice over the course of one’s residency training.
  • Variety in speakers: Conferences are primarily faculty-driven, with interspersed resident lectures. Additionally, we typically host a monthly Grand Rounds with guest speakers.
  • Joint conferences: We conduct several joint conferences (lectures and workshops) with faculty and/or residents from other specialties including Trauma Surgery, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Critical Care, etc.
  • Board preparation: Oral board prep is typically done twice/year via mock oral board sessions. Written board and in-training exam prep is primarily asynchronous via Rosh Review and Peer (provided by the program), in addtion to targetted sessions in February of each year.
  • Focused conferences: Monthly morbidity and mortality conferences and journal club add to the variety of content presented to residents.
  • Skills sessions: Regular procedural workshops, EKG and Radiology skills workshops and simulation sessions round off our hybrid format.
  • Individualized interactive instruction: Twenty percent of our conference offerings are presented outside the classroom setting (1 hour per 4 hours of in-classroom time). These assignments are viewed asynchronously and then residents come back to conference to discuss them further as a group, with a further option to discuss the individually with a program director.  This format utilizes online FOAMed resources such as ALiEM, RebelEM, etc.
  • Morning report: On all weekdays except Wednesdays we conduct a resident-led 30-minute morning report in a conference room near the ED. This is required for all clinical residents/faculty only and is setup as a case-based discussion with focused teaching points.
  • COVID Update: Due to our significant experience with virtual education in the global health arena, with the COVID pandemic we were quickly able to pivot to virtual conferences, including workshops in March 2020 - we did not miss a single week of protected conference time due to the pandemic. Based on institutional guidelines and close monitoring of the pandemic we successfully phased back in-person conferences in Spring 2021. We continue to remain in-person with a Zoom option available to residents and faculty based on clinical schedules, and on occasion pivoting back to all-virtual based on local circumstances.