Learning Clinical Versus Leadership Competencies in the Emergency Department: Strategies, Challenges, and Supports of Emergency Medicine Residents

Abstract

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) identifies 6 competencies for emergency medicine (EM) residents. In addition to clinical skills, 5 areas (patient care, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, and systems-based practice) include leadership requirements such as decision making, effective communication, collaboration, and team leadership. Emergency departments (EDs) provide mixed conditions for mastering clinical and leadership competencies. The ED is a rich learning environment because of the volume and variety of undifferentiated patients and many experienced professionals from whom to learn.2,3 At the same time, learning may be challenging owing to the unpredictable workload, limited time for high-quality discussions, and frequent interruptions. AbstractBackground Emergency medicine residents are expected to master 6 competencies that include clinical and leadership skills. To date, studies have focused primarily on teaching strategies, for example, what attending physicians should do to help residents learn. Residents' own contributions to the learning process remain largely unexplored. The purpose of this study was to explore what emergency medicine residents believe helps them learn the skills required for practice in the emergency department.

Redefining clinical leadership for team-course development

“…CL skills in teams are not well developed among healthcare workers. [22] The complexity of patient care and crowding in the ED and hospital wards are associated with a number of negative health outcomes, including unnecessary deaths, increased waiting times and a decrease in quality of care. [23] These factors necessitate the development of strong interdisciplinary team skills among medical personnel.…”

Assessing Team Leadership in Emergency Medicine: The Milestones and Beyond

“…[7][8][9] There has also been increased emphasis on team leadership training and assessment in graduate medical education overall, 10,11 and within the specialty of emergency medicine (EM). 12 While the number of studies describing efforts in team leadership training and assessment has risen exponentially over the past decade, the best mechanisms for effectively training and assessing team leadership within EM remain elusive. 13,14 This knowledge gap leaves EM residency programs to approach this task in isolation, resulting in a wide variation in how team leadership is defined, trained, and assessed.…”

Competencies in Swedish emergency departments – The practitioners’ and managers’ perspective

“…Practitioners need pedagogical competencies (Wei and Camargo, 2000;Williams et al, 2007;Smith et al, 2008) in order to inform and educate patients and their relatives based on the needs that caused them to visit the ED. The capability to organise, co-ordinate and manage everyday work requires practitioners to possess leadership competence (Goldman et al, 2011). Finally, practitioners need academic competence (Pallen and Timmins, 2002;Burke et al, 2005;Fink et al, 2005) not only to be critical of science, research and scientific knowledge but also to implement and evaluate evidence-based improvement and quality management.…”