Temple
Emergency Medicine
Clinical Curriculum
Each year consists of 13 separate four-week rotations. Central to the curriculum is the expectation to provide comprehensive training in the areas fundamental to the specialty of emergency medicine. Furthermore, emergency medicine residents will develop an understanding and awareness of the major disciplines with which the emergency medicine specialist must interface. The components of the experiential curriculum are listed below.
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Included in the resident vacation time of three weeks, is a one-week "holiday block". Residents chose between Christmas (typically 12/21-12/27) or New Years (12/28-1/4).
01
Fundamentals
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Emergency Medicine - TUH 26 weeks
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Pediatric Emergency Medicine - CHOP 4 weeks
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Pediatric ICU - St.Chris 4 weeks
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Trauma - 4 weeks
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Medical ICU - 4 weeks
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Anesthesia - 4 weeks
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Ultrasound - 4 weeks
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Obstetrics/EMS - 4 weeks
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Vacation - 3 weeks
02
Efficiency
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Emergency Medicine - TUH 14 weeks
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Emergency Medicine - Episcopal 4 weeks
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Emergency Medicine - Jeanes 8 weeks
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Pediatric Emergency Medicine - CHOP 4 weeks
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Surgical ICU - 4 weeks
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Toxicology/Addiction Medicine - 4 weeks
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Trauma 4 weeks
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Burn ICU 4 weeks
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Elective - 3 weeks
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Vacation - 4 weeks
03
Leadership
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Emergency Medicine - TUH 21 weeks
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Emergency Medicine - Episcopal 8 weeks
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Emergency Medicine - Jeanes 4 weeks
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Pediatric Emergency Medicine - CHOP 4 weeks
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Medical ICU 4 weeks
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Administration - 4 weeks
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Elective - 3 weeks
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Vacation - 4 weeks
Didactics
The core content of Emergency Medicine as outlined by the American Board of Emergency Medicine (18 topics) will be covered twice over the residents’ 3 years of training. Most didactic presentations will take place during the Emergency Medicine Conference Series held Thursday mornings from 8:00am to 12:00 pm. Each month has a designated system theme, and corresponding suggested reading.
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Each month, senior resident and faculty leaders take turns leading 2 hour Active Learning Sessions (ALS). Under this “flipped classroom” model, EM residents prepare by listening to podcasts, watching archived multimedia presentations from major meetings, or brand new material recorded by their faculty and peers. Then they come to the session and participate in case discussions, role-play, debates and other hands-on activities. Residents receive credit for the dedicated time they spend on the preparation, which we call asynchronous learning.
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Other components of the monthly schedule are designed to cover core content, as well as new areas of interest, emerging research or controversies. Temple EM faculty and visiting speakers provide 40 minute lectures, with part of the time spent covering high yield facts of diagnosis and mangement, and the rest on an area of expertise. Temple interns prepare short, high yield talks as part of the “Number Needed to Treat (NNT)” series. Second years present a follow up case that corresponds to an area of academic interest, as part of the Content Expert Program. Senior residents lead the ALS and also the Morbidity & Mortality series.
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Simulation
Our simulation curriculum involves simulation cases both at our state of the art simulation center as well as in situ simulation cases in the ED itself. We run simulation cases approximately 1-2 times a month during conference. Our curriculum is a three year longitudinal course, and is divided by learner level (i.e. PGY-I, II, and III) so that we can better cater the cases and the learning objectives to the residents level of training. In addition, our in situ cases allow residents to practice sim with higher environmental fidelity in the same areas of the ED they actually practice in!
ITE Review
We have a very special Inservice Training Exam (ITE) Review annually to help prepare our residents to take their ITE. While we expect residents to longitudinally study for this exam, which spans all core content of Emergency Medicine, the ITE Review day is a way to help refresh our residents on a large breadth of topics. The conference day itself is uniquely themed every year, as residents are divided into groups to partake in multiple games and small group learning stations.
Journal Club
Journal Club is held once a month, usually on a Tuesday night. Four articles are presented and discussed by the group, with the purpose of keeping up with the current EM literature and learning how to critically read medical publications. Check out our blog for short synopses of previously reviewed articles.
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Journal Club is “protected time,” meaning that attending physicians cover the emergency department and all of the residents are free to participate. We take advantage of this time to get out of the hospital, and hold this event at a different location each month–prior locations have included restaurants, bars, outdoor picnics, bonfires and the homes of faculty and residents.
Journal Club is followed by “Residents’ Night Out,” which is protected time for the residents to get together and do something fun outside of the clinical setting. Residents’ Night Out has included going to a haunted prison, dragon-boating on the Schuylkill River, karaoke, among many other activities.
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Content Expert Program
In 2015, Temple's Dept of EM introduced the Content Expert Program (CEP). Through the program, each resident is paired with a faculty advisor to develop expertise in a content area within emergency medicine, including core clinical topics, educational advancements, operational improvements, and research. The CEP spans the three-year residency, in which time each resident will appraise the literature as it relates to their content area, develop an intervention to improve or enhance departmental performance in that area, and study their intervention. CEP projects, which are often multidisciplinary, teach each resident the skills needed to practice performance improvement.