Innovative Emergency Medicine Residency Teaching Modalities

Over the last five years, the faculty members of UC Irvine Emergency Medicine Residency Program have incorporated a variety of innovative teaching modalities to engage and educate their residents and medical students. Ten percent of the curriculum is asynchronous; residents watch online lectures, take quizzes, and read important articles at their own pace. During in-person didactics, the curriculum incorporates both medical knowledge and teamwork.

A consistent theme in many of these modalities is a friendly sense of educational competition. Residents can earn badges for winning competitions or for other accomplishments, such as publishing an article or taking on a leadership position. Badges are displayed prominently on a leaderboard. Badges can be earned in many ways. Winners of the trivia style weekly reading Kahoot! quizzes earn badges on the leaderboard. In a more hands-on approach, residents can also earn a badge by doing well in a simulation competition (akin to Society for Academic Emergency Medicine’s (SAEM) SimWars), where they run through clinical cases or participate in splinting, CPR, and intubating competitions. During scavenger hunts and escape rooms, residents answer emergency medicine related questions in order to solve puzzles or obtain the next clue. Other fun learning modalities include Sonolympics, which is a combination of point of care ultrasound contests and trivia; the Wilderness Games with Dr. Katzer is held annually at San Onofre and challenges residents on a series of wilderness-based EM cases. In the Clinical Pathologic Case (CPC) competition (akin to Council for Residency Director’s CPC competition), junior residents challenge the senior residents to “solve” difficult cases. The residents are scored on their clinical reasoning and presentation style.

Case based and team based learning is also utilized in place of standard lectures. When a traditional lecture is given, a concerted effort is made to create a shorter, higher impact, and more hands-on lecture format for the residents. It is also a priority to expose residents to the clinical experience and opinions of physicians from other specialties and emergency medicine physicians outside of UC Irvine. Multi-specialty panels and panels made up of EM physicians from various private hospitals help residents to learn how cases are managed by different specialists, in different hospital systems.

This broad array of teaching modalities have been gradually incorporated to ensure that the residents have a fun and educational learning environment during their three years of residency training at UC Irvine. We look forward to see what our inventive faculty has planned for the years yet to come!