Procedural Skills Training in Emergency Medicine Physicians Within the Edmonton Zone: A Needs Assessment

The objectives were to describe the current procedural skill practices, attitudes toward procedural skill competency, and the role for educational skills training sessions among emergency medicine (EM) physicians within a geographic health zone.

This is a multicenter descriptive cross-sectional survey of all EM physicians working at 12 emergency departments (EDs) within the Edmonton Zone in 2019. Survey items addressed current procedural skill performance frequency; perceived importance and confidence; current methods to maintain competence; barriers and facilitating factors to participation in a curriculum; preferred teaching methods; and desired frequency of practice for each procedural skill.

Survey response rate was 53.6%. Variability in frequency of performed procedures was seen across the type of hospital sites. For the majority of skills, there was a significantly positive correlation between the frequency at which a skill was performed and the perceived confidence performing said skill. There was inconsistency and no significant correlation with perceived importance, perceived confidence or frequency performing a given skill, and the desired frequency of training for that skill. Course availability (76.2%) and time (72.8%) are the most common identified barriers to participation in procedural skills training.

This study summarized the current ED procedural skill practices among EM physicians in the Edmonton Zone and attitudes toward an educational curriculum for procedural skill competency. This represents a step toward targeted continuing professional development in staff physicians.