[The emergency room as a setting for clinical training]

The undergraduate medical curriculum does not include supervised training in emergency services. Medical students and residents are expected to acquire skills and experience related to emergency medicine during their clerkships in the clinical wards. Consequently, Israeli medical graduates often have difficulty in coping with common situations in primary care and emergency medicine. In response to the perceived need of emergency training, we modified the undergraduate teaching program of the clinical clerkship. During their medical clerkship, students spent several weeks in the emergency ward. Residents were similarly assigned to the emergency ward on a rotating basis for 3-month periods. Both the positive feedback of the trainees and the practical relevance of the program and its feasibility, suggest that it may be a worthwhile addition to the undergraduate and graduate clinical curriculum. However, we have no data for evaluating the outcome. We feel that all aspects of emergency medicine should be included in the teaching programs of the various clinical specialties, and suggest that the emergency room should be used as a teaching setting during the clinical clerkship, the internship and residency training.