Australasian emergency physicians: a learning and educational needs analysis. Part one: background and methodology....

Fellows of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (FACEM) have opportunities to participate in a range of continuing professional development activities. To inform FACEM and assist those involved in planning continuing professional development interventions for FACEM, we undertook a learning needs analysis of emergency physicians.

Exploratory study using survey methodology. Following questionnaire development by iterative feedback with emergency physicians and researchers, a mailed survey was distributed to all FACEM. The survey comprised eight items on work and demographic characteristics of FACEM, and 194 items on attitudes to existing learning opportunities, barriers to learning, and perceived learning needs and preferences.

Fifty-eight percent (503/854) of all FACEM surveyed responded to the questionnaire, almost half of whom attained their FACEM after year 2000. The sample comprised mostly males (72.8%) with mean age of the sample 41.6 years, similar to ACEM database. Most respondents reported working in ACEM accredited hospitals (89%), major referral hospitals (54%), and practiced on both children and adults (78%). FACEM reported working on average 26.7 clinical hours per week with those at private hospitals working a greater proportion of clinical hours than other hospital types.

As the first of six related reports, this paper documents the methodology used, including questionnaire development, and provides the demographics of responding FACEM, including the clinical and non-clinical hours worked and type of hospital of principal employment.