Evaluation of freestanding emergency centers as alternate training sites

To assess the potential of freestanding emergency centers (FECs) as alternative sites for residency training in ambulatory care, questionnaire data about experiences in these centers were collected from 52 residents moonlighting in FECs, and the characteristics of the patient population were gathered by reviewing the records of 5,839 visits at three centers. The FEC patients differed from those of family/general physicians and internists nationwide by age, sex, and medical problem. Moonlighting residents reported that the chief educational benefit of the FEC experience is the opportunity to treat problems they would not have seen in their academic medical center clinics.