Impact of the 4‐hour emergency department target on medical student education

‘To teach or not to teach?’ Factors that motivate and constrain Australian emergency medicine physicians to teach medical students

“…The ED offers unique opportunities for clinical teaching as it exposes students to acutely ill patients with undifferentiated presentations, demanding quick problem solving and often involving procedural skills . The ED is also a challenging place in which to teach because of pressures to treat quickly and efficiently in order to avoid access block for other acutely ill patients . Given that every medical student in Australia spends time in the ED, an additional challenge, compounding the demand for teaching, is the increased number of medical students from existing and new medical schools.…”

“…7 The ED is also a challenging place in which to teach because of pressures to treat quickly and efficiently in order to avoid access block for other acutely ill patients. 8 Given that every medical student in Australia spends time in the ED, 7 an additional challenge, compounding the demand for teaching, is the increased number of medical students from existing and new medical schools. Under these circumstances the experienced clinical ED teacher is becoming an overutilised and increasingly scarce resource.…”