Emergency Medicine Postgraduates' Feelings on the New Emergency Medicine Specialty Curriculum

Aim: The recognition of Emergency Medicine in France as a full medical specialty was completed in 2015. This new academic training will replace the complementary emergency medicine graduates, and will allow a board certification as emergency physician. We aim to assess the opinions of the actual postgraduate emergency medicine students on this new curriculum. Methods: We surveyed the Paris area's postgraduate emergency medicine students in March 2017. The primary endpoint was their choice of the new curriculum if it had been available at the time they chose their specialty. The secondary endpoints were their wish to register to the medical board as emergency physicians, and to pursue their actual training if it brought them to drop their initial specialty. Results: 95 answers were received. 41% said that they would have chosen the new training if they could. 38% wanted to register to the medical board as emergency physicians. If they had to drop their initial specialty for it, 39% would accept to pursue their actual training. The wish to choose this new training if it had been possible was strongly associated with the wish to register to the medical board as an emergency physician and with the wish to pursue the actual training dropping initial specialty. Discussion: These results show a typical profile, representing 2 students out of 5, who would choose the new emergency medicine training, whereas the rest of the actual students would not make this new choice.