MacEmerg Podcast: A Novel Initiative to Connect a Distributed Community of Practice.

Background: Regional knowledge dissemination and information sharing is a challenge among physically divided groups of physicians. Many staff and resident physicians do not have easy access to share clinical and medical education and research information with each other in an academic setting. Our divisions of emergency medicine could benefit from a novel approach aimed at improving overall connection and collaborative engagement.

Direct Observation Tools in Emergency Medicine: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

Objectives: Direct observation is important for assessing the competency of medical learners. Multiple tools have been described in other fields, although the degree of emergency medicine-specific literature is unclear. This review sought to summarize the current literature on direct observation tools in the emergency department (ED) setting.

Experiences of Participants During In Situ Simulation With a Learner Present.

Background: While in situ simulation (ISS) provides robust value for health care teams, it is less clear how medical learners affect the experiences of other participants.

Methods: This was a single-center qualitative analysis of a community hospital's emergency department ISS program that included medical learners (medical students, family and emergency medicine residents). Focus groups were conducted before and after with nurses, staff physicians, and resident physicians.

Converting to Connect: A Rapid RE-AIM Evaluation of the Digital Conversion of a Clerkship Curriculum in the Age of COVID-19.

Background: With the advent of the 2019 coronavirus pandemic, a decision was made to remove medical students from clinical rotations for their own safety. This forced students on a core emergency medicine (EM) rotation at McMaster University to immediately cease all in-person activities. An urgent need for a virtual curriculum emerged.

Multiple Wins: Embracing Technology to Increase Efficiency and Maximize Efforts.

Clinician educators (CEs) are challenged to produce meaningful scholarship while balancing various clinical and administrative roles. The increasing availability of technology provides new opportunities for scholarly output and dissemination. This article proposes three strategies for utilizing technology to enhance scholarly output for the busy CE.

Applying Design Thinking Principles to Curricular Development in Medical Education.

Medical education is an ever-evolving field, resulting in numerous changes and modifications to curricular structure, learner assessment, feedback, and remediation. To best meet the needs of the individual learners, it is important to design curricula that meet their needs. Design thinking (DT) first gained popularity in the 1960s and, since then, has been applied to problem solving within business, primary education, and medicine.