A Multi-center Simulation-Based Emergency Medicine Resident Boot Camp Can Improve Teamwork, Communication, and...

Boot camps are designed to deliver highly specific education in a short amount of time. Educational boot camps are known to improve confidence in clinical capabilities and medical knowledge and promote teamwork skills. We created an emergency medicine (EM) boot camp with targeted learning objectives based on expected mastery of post-graduate year (PGY)-level educational objectives based on the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) EM milestones. This boot camp included a qualitative assessment, survey-based feedback, and quantitative assessment, which included the team's performance utilizing a validated code team checklist (Cardiac Code Management Assessment Tool). After attending the conference, EM residents felt more confident in achieving the EM ACGME milestones including the ability to provide immediate interventions to a critical patient, effective use of team communication, the ability to switch tasks efficiently, and to provide real-time feedback to their team. Eighty-six percent of residents preferred this teaching modality over other conference-based didactics and would like to see greater incorporation of similar interventions in future conferences.