{"pk":20281,"title":"Substantial Variation Exists in Clinical Exposure to Chief Complaints Among Residents Within an Emergency Medicine Training Program","subtitle":null,"abstract":"

Introduction: While many aspects of emergency medicine (EM) residency training are standardized among residents within a single residency program, there is no standard for the distribution of chief complaints (CC) that residents should see over the course of residency. This could result in substantial variability in each resident’s clinical exposure. Our objective in this study was to explore EM residents’ clinical exposure to CCs to determine whether substantial variation exists. If such variation exists, this could suggest the need for curricular reform to address gaps in resident clinical exposure during training.

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Methods: This was a retrospective observational study of EM residents who graduated in the years 2016–2021 at a single, university-affiliated emergency department (ED) in the midwestern United States. All patient encounters where a CC was logged were included and categorized into 1 of 20 clinical domains based on the 2016 American Board of Emergency Medicine Model of Clinical Practice. We calculated descriptive statistics for the top 10 most encountered domains for comparison among residents.

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Results: We included a total of 228,916 patient encounters from 69 residents in the analysis. Residents were involved in an average of 3,323 distinct patient encounters during the study period. The overall interquartile range for patient encounters was 523. The three CC domains with the broadest interquartile variation were abdominal and gastrointestinal disorders (116), musculoskeletal disorders (nontraumatic)(93), and traumatic disorders (86).

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Conclusion: Within a single, three-year academic EM program, substantial variation existed among residents with regard to the variety of patient CCs seen during their residency training. 

","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\r\n\r\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"education"},{"word":"Efficiency"},{"word":"Clinical Case Mix"},{"word":"Residency"},{"word":"program evaluation"}],"section":"Education","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2406763q","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Corlin","middle_name":"M.","last_name":"Jewell","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine, Madison, Wisconsin","department":""},{"first_name":"Amy","middle_name":"T.","last_name":"Hummel","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine, Madison, Wisconsin; Emergency Medicine Specialists SC, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin","department":""},{"first_name":"Dann","middle_name":"J.","last_name":"Hekman","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine, Madison, Wisconsin","department":""},{"first_name":"Benjamin","middle_name":"H.","last_name":"Schnapp","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine, Madison, Wisconsin","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2024-02-26T03:07:58.863000Z","date_accepted":"2024-09-30T12:58:45.551000Z","date_published":"2024-11-19T14:00:00Z","render_galley":{"label":"Final Article","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/westjem/article/20281/galley/30053/download/"},"galleys":[{"label":"Layout","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/westjem/article/20281/galley/28882/download/"},{"label":"Final Article","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/westjem/article/20281/galley/30053/download/"}]}