Education Committee

Mission Statements

  • To promote local, frequent, scenario-based Emergency Medicine training in Europe
  • To promote checklists in order to align education with safe and efficient patient care

Training: Why Bother?

Clinical practice is essential but not sufficient to acquire and maintain the skills required of a specialist in Emergency Medicine (EM). Frequent training sessions are also essential. The aims of these sessions are to complement clinical practice by:

  • focusing on the recognition and management of serious, time-critical conditions that rarely present to the Emergency Department
  • practising procedures that are seldom performed in the emergency room
  • highlighting the results of new studies and the latest guidelines
  • discussing the links between symptoms, pathophysiology, pharmacology, diagnostic principles, ethics and logistics in order to develop the ability to solve new situations based on analogy
  • providing a forum to discuss complicated work-related situations and share strategies

Local Training

“Local” training refers to training sessions held locally and run by physicians belonging to local emergency programs. Local training is advantageous in several regards:

  • it minimizes transportation time and expenses and makes short, regular training sessions feasible
  • it provides a forum for reflection on and development of local practice, and facilitates the integration of education with clinical practice
  • it hones the teaching skills of local residents and specialists
  • it provides a forum where physicians in the program regularly meet

Constructive Alignment

EUSEM’s Education Committee wishes to promote the pedagogical model Constructive Alignment [1, 2] as a model well suited for EM training.  Constructive Alignment emphasizes:

  • engaging participants in learning activities (instead of having them listen to lectures)
  • aligning learning activities with the objective (the ability to deliver quality clinical care within the realm of EM) and with assessments (e.g. the European Board Examination in Emergency Medicine)

Checklists

A checklist is “an organized tool that outlines criteria of consideration for a particular process” [3].  Checklists are used in many industries to promote safety and efficiency [4].  Checklists are being increasingly used in medicine, and there are theoretical grounds to argue that checklists may promote safe and efficient care within the realm of EM.  Checklists may also be used as educational tools in order to align education with clinical practice and examinations, and give feedback during training sessions.

Strategies

In light of our mission statements and material presented above, our strategies are as follows:

  • To provide on-line educational resources including checklists, a data-base of scenarios, links to educational resources and a model of scenario-based EM resident training (some of this material is currently available at https://academy.eusem.org)
  • To deliver of a one-day EBEEM Part B preparation course twice a year.
  • To network with the EM community during the yearly EUSEM congress, other conferences, courses and meetings in order to inventory educational needs and resources and facilitate educational endeavours in Europe.

Gregor Prosen;

  1. Biggs, J., Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education, 1996. 32: p. 347-364.
  2. Biggs, J., Constructing learning by aligning teaching: constructive alignment, in Teaching for quality learning at university2003, Open University Press/Society for Research into Higher Education: Buckingham. p. 11-33.
  3. Hales, B., et al., Development of medical checklists for improved quality of patient care. Int J Qual Health Care, 2008. 20(1): p. 22-30.
  4. Gawande, A., The checklist manifesto : how to get things right2010, New York, N.Y., London: Metropolitan Books, Profile Books.

Meeting minutes and reports

Please find the meeting minutes and reports.

For members only

Curriculum+

Please find here a Google doc with links to learning material that will help you to study the EM Curriculum. 

Contact

Education Committee Chair: Ruth Brown

Board Liaison: Christoph Dodt, Vice-President

To join the Education committee or for other inquiries you can email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.