GroundED in EM

In the current pandemic, so much has changed. But the need for continuing medical education and producing competent physicians has not. With institutions struggling to protect their students without compromising their education, there has been a void to fill. ALIEM has worked tirelessly to produce a clerkship rotation, targeted to serve third-year medical students. Our goal was to create a platform that would allow medical students to develop a strong foundation on the various facets of emergency medicine. While this does not replace a clinical time at the bedside, it does provide a solid framework on how to approach undifferentiated patients within the emergency department, understanding the inner workings of Emergency Medicine, as well as developing medical decision-making skills. GroundED in EM is a four-week long clerkship that encompasses a curriculum centered around the six core competencies endorsed by ACGME. Participant retention is assessed with multiple choices questions focusing on material covered. We hope that by completing this clerkship rotation, you will be pushed to further develop your medical decision skills in a way that can be easily translated to the bedside when you are able to return to patient care.

But wait, did you know that we also have a newsletter dedicated to medical students pursuing a career in EM? So many rules of the game in the senior year and application process have changed. Feel up to date with the news on a monthly basis with ALiEM’s free EM Bound newsletter.

Topics

The resources were vetted to ensure an up-to-date and inclusive combination of topics that would be perfect for third year medical students to learn about during their first EM rotation. We intentionally interweaved topics and built in spaced repetition for maximal long-term retention (see the ALiEM review of Make it Stick for more on how to learn well). These resources are presented in an active learning format (google forms), with both written and auditory resources. Mote importantly there are NO textbook chapters! 😀

Getting Started

We recommend the following tips:

1. Schedule time in your calendar each day to do the reading and/or listening. By setting aside a little time each day, you can accomplish a lot over the month during your EM clerkship.
2. Times are provided by each section that will be covered so you can map out your study schedule over the week.

GroundED in EM Course Platform

The GroundED series is hosted on ALiEMU, which is a free learning management platform. Sign up for a free ALiEMU account, if you don’t have one already, and start the series. When you complete each course, you are awarded a digital badge and a downloadable certificate for your records.

Clerkship Directors

GroundED in EM was designed with you in mind. This curriculum was created to provide third-year medical students the exposure to Emergency Medicine core content using high yield online learning resources and interactive assessment. It uses a mix of resources from trusted sources in EM specialty societies (SAEM, CDEM, ACEP, and EMRA) as well numerous #FOAMed resources chosen by our planning team. The full curriculum is meant for those clerkships unable to offer students the normal amount of clinical time given institutional restrictions as the time commitment for the full curriculum is significant. However, when distance learning is over, clerkships could also use this curriculum to supplement the clinical learning and create high-yield in-person learning sessions augmented by these modules. 

If you wish to track your students’ status on each course completion using the Educator Dashboard, sign up to be an ALiEMU coach [instructions]. 

The GroundED in EM Team

Editor in Chief:

• Dr. Andy Little (Associate Program Director, AdventHealth EM Residency)
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Editors:

• Brian Barbas, MD, FACEP (Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, Loyola University Chicago – Stritch School of Medicine)
• Carmen J. Martinez, MD MSMEd (Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of South Alabama)
• Guy Carmelli, MD, MSEd (Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Massachusetts)
• Laryssa A. Patti, MD (Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School)
• Meenal Sharkey, MD FACEP (Assistant Program Director & Clerkship Director; Department of Emergency Medicine, Doctors Hospital)

Adventure Co-Creators:

• Kaitlin Bowers, DO (Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine, Campbell University College of Osteopathic Medicine)
• Meenal Sharkey, MD FACEP (Assistant Program Director & Clerkship Director; Department of Emergency Medicine, Doctors Hospital)