Department of Emergency Medicine

Didactics

The Emergency Medicine (EM) residency program provides several methods of training residents. Didactics include presenting and attending lectures, reading textbooks, practicing oral boards, and attending reading and journal clubs. There are five hours of didactics each week, you will be granted time to attend these lectures when on off service rotations. Faculty are very open to suggestions for modification of the didactics for improvement. In preparation for the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) national exams, residents are required to take a written standardized ABEM practice exam yearly and participate in mock oral boards monthly. After residency, residents take the ABEM written and oral exams to become board-certified in emergency medicine.

In the course of residency, residents participate in presenting lectures which may include: Core Content, Grand Rounds and Case Conference. The Core Content lecture series deals with basic EM topics. Grand Rounds can be any EM topic of the resident’s choice and must be presented comprehensively.

The Department of Emergency Medicine is dedicated to providing the latest in technology as teaching tools. As a result, it has invested a substantial amount of money in multimedia. Residents prepare lectures using Microsoft Powerpoint, which allows the combination of text, graphs, photos, and sound to be incorporated into the presentation. The department maintains its own computer server to put these presentations on the internet. There are computer-work stations in the residents’ lounge in the EM departmental office area and numerous computers in the Emergency Department which are accessible to all residents. All of the computers have T1 internet connection access.

WVU Emergency Medicine residency program considers research an important part of learning. Thus, it is integrated as a requirement for residents. Residents must complete a project by the time they graduate. If a paper is accepted for a conference presentation, the EM department will pay all expenses for the resident to present it.