Developing ClerkCast: An Emergency Medicine Clerkship Needs Assessment Project

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Emergency Medicine Training
• Open Educational Resources (OERs)

Background:

• Medical students face challenges in managing undifferentiated emergency medicine (EM) patients.
• Existing faculty-authored Open Educational Resources (OERs) may not fully address student learning needs.
• There is a gap in EM OERs specifically designed to help students approach undifferentiated presentations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify emergency medicine (EM) topics that medical students find most challenging.
• To inform the development of a novel podcast curriculum using Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAMed) principles.
• To create targeted educational resources for approaching undifferentiated EM patients.

Main Methods:

• An online survey-based needs assessment was conducted with key stakeholders.
• 32 EM topics were evaluated by participants on a five-point Likert scale for perceived student learning needs.
• Data was collected from medical students and EM educators, including resident and staff physicians.

Main Results:

• A total of 58 participants (23 medical students, 19 resident physicians, 16 staff EM physicians) met inclusion criteria.
• 23 EM presentations were prioritized as high-need by both students and educators.
• Critical care and acute medicine topics received the highest mean scores for learning need.

Conclusions:

• 23 out of 32 surveyed topics were identified as high priority for developing new online educational resources.
• Nine additional high-priority topics were identified through free-text responses.
• Findings will guide the creation of an open access podcast curriculum for EM medical students.