Emergency medicine clerkship directors: current workforce

The emergency medicine clerkship director serves an important role in the education of medical students. The authors sought to update the demographic and academic profile of the emergency medicine clerkship director.

We developed and implemented a comprehensive questionnaire, and used it to survey all emergency medicine clerkship directors at United States allopathic medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. We analyzed and interpreted data using descriptive statistics.

One hundred seven of 133 (80.4%) emergency medicine clerkship directors completed the survey. Clerkship Director's mean age was 39.7 years (SD-7.2), they were more commonly male 68.2%, of Caucasian racial backgrounds and at the instructor or assistant professor (71.3%) level. The mean number of years of experience as clerkship director was 5.5 (SD-4.5). The mean amount of protected time for clerkship administration reported by respondents was 7.3 hours weekly (SD-5.1), with the majority (53.8%) reporting 6 or more hours of protected time per week. However, 32.7% of emergency medicine clerkship directors reported not having any protected time for clerkship administration. Most clerkship directors (91.6%) held additional teaching responsibilities beyond their clerkship and many were involved in educational research (49.5%). The majority (79.8%), reported being somewhat or very satisfied with their job as clerkship director.

Most clerkship directors were junior faculty at the instructor or assistant professor rank and were involved with a variety of educational endeavors beyond the clerkship.