Resident as teacher: general needs assessment in emergency medicine

Introduction: Increasingly, residents are involved in the education of medical students, their peers and other health professionals. This study focused on the general needs assessment of the emergency medicine (EM) residents in developing a resident-as-teacher curriculum. Methods: An anonymous and voluntary survey, which consisted of multiple choice and free text questions, was sent to all emergency physicians (EPs) working in the 7 restructured hospitals in Singapore. Results: A total of 68 (60%) EPs completed the online survey. Overall, 19 (28%) EPs have undergone formal training in teaching. Majority of the EPs felt that it was important for the residents to acquire competent teaching skills at the end of their residency training. All of the EPs were in consensus that there should be formal instruction to the residents on how to teach. The four themes which emerged from the barriers to developing teaching skills in residents were time constraints, lack of faculty development, attitudes of both faculty and residents and a non-conducive work environment with high service requirements. Conclusions: To develop the resident as an all rounded Emergency Physician, structured training and formal instruction for the developing of teaching and feedback skills must be included in the residency training. However in order for the new curriculum to be successful and achieve its primary objective of developing the residents' competencies in teaching, barriers hindering both the faculty and residents have to be addressed. Finally, faculty development needs to be done to equip the faculty with the appropriate teaching and feedback tools.