Protected clinical teaching time and a bedside clinical evaluation instrument in an emergency medicine training program.

In a process that has evolved over the last four years, the Emory University Emergency Medicine Education Committee has developed an "academic attending" teaching shift incorporating a formatted lecture series with a clinical evaluation exercise (CEE). The program structures the approach to clinical teaching at the bedside, provides an objective clinical evaluation tool specific to emergency medicine residents, and provides targeted learning for medical students and residents rotating in the emergency department (ED). The CEE instrument was designed to be quick and efficient, satisfy requirements of assessment of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) general competencies, and incorporate the language of the "Model of the Clinical Practice of Emergency Medicine." The original program called for unstructured bedside teaching three days a week, by faculty freed from clinical duties, combined with a limited series of introductory emergency medicine lectures. The program proved more successful when concentrated in a once weekly structured educational program. The prepared, repeating lecture series has been expanded to include many of the most common ED presenting chief complaints and has significantly advanced a curriculum for medical students and visiting interns. A CEE was developed to evaluate and provide immediate feedback to residents on many of the core ACGME competencies. The CEE has been successfully used to structure the bedside educational encounter. This dedicated non-clinical "teaching" shift appears effective in meeting the educational goals of the authors' academic ED. This is a description of the program and its evolution; the program has not been formally evaluated.