A qualification course in an international emergency medicine intervention

The Tuscan Emergency Medicine Initiative is a comprehensive training program for physicians designed to create a lasting infrastructure for training in emergency medicine (EM) in a region of Italy. A "Train-the-Trainers" model was utilized to prepare physicians who were working in the emergency department (ED) to become the teachers of EM, and a master's program was created to train the next generation of emergency physicians as well as to put in place a structure into which residency training in EM will be placed. This model has been used in other projects as well; however, the dilemma of what to do with physicians who are already in practice remained an unsolved problem.

We wished to create a qualification course in EM for this important group of physicians.

Didactic lectures, workshops, simulations, and clinical rotations were utilized to standardize current emergency care delivery in the region's EDs.

Between 2005 and 2008, 488 physicians completed the program.

We propose this model as a way of training and including the physicians caught in the transition to specialty training in any area developing the specialty of EM.