General Emergency Medicine Rotation
Welcome to the General Emergency Medicine Senior Medical Student Elective! We are excited to have you here with us and look forward to sharing in your development into a skilled physician. There are 4 essential components to your rotation here:
I. Clinical Shifts & Written Evaluations
You will be scheduled for 14 eight-hour clinical shifts during your orientation. These shifts are meant to develop your bedside clinical skills and reasoning. You will be working side by side with the Emergency Medicine attending as you see patients in our busy department. The distribution of these shifts is as follows:
- 10-11 shifts at Inova Fairfax Hospital adult ED (Level 1 Trauma center and Stroke Center with over 85,000 visits/year)
- 1-2 shifts at Inova Fairfax Hospital pediatric ED (Dedicated Pediatric Emergency Department and Trauma Center with over 40,000 visits/year)
- 1 shift at Inova Emergency Care Center – Reston (Free-standing Emergency Department with one-to-one time with Emergency Medicine attending)
- 1 shift at Inova Emergency Care Center – Fairfax (Free-standing Emergency Department with one-to-one time with Emergency Medicine attending)
At the completion of each shift, you should hand any attendings you worked with a written evaluation form (supplied by Jobeth, our rotation coordinator). These are an important part of your time with us! Please hand out as many of these forms as you can so that we are able to provide as much useful feedback to you as possible.
Please review the Clinical Rotation Guidelines before you start your first shift.
II. Written Histories and Physicals
You will be writing Student H&Ps in EPIC on every patient that you see during your clinical shifts.
You should be using the Student Note Template. To create your note:
- Copy text from the file.
- Create a new smartphrase in EPIC. Paste in the copied text and save it.
- Create a new note and insert this smartphrase.
Please pick 8 of these Student H&Ps to refine and hand in for feedback, 4 to be turned before the halfway point of your rotation, 4 after. The purpose of these H&Ps is for us to help us hear what and how you are thinking, so the Assessment/Plan and ED Course sections are very important (see Steps 4-7 in the required reading article “Approach to the Undifferentiated Patient”). Keep in mind, it is always better to express a thought process/plan that is “wrong” than to have no thought process or plan at all!
III. Online Reading & Quizzes
The required reading and quizzes below are important to the growth of your fund of Emergency Medicine knowledge.
Firstly, there are required articles to read to help acclimate you to the Emergency Medicine environment and way of thinking. PLEASE READ THEM. The material covered will help you excel during your rotation. Hence, we recommend you read them at the very beginning of your month.
Additionally, there are 12 online quizzes that cover various topics, both adult and pediatric, that need to be completed. There are links to associated reading as well. You must complete 6 of these quizzes before the halfway point of your rotation and 6 after. These questions are open book/internet. You may take each exam only once. The goal of these questions is completion, but you should aim for >70%. While we are able to independently verify your scores, sending in screenshots of your quiz results will help us get your feedback/final grade back to you sooner. Please do this. Note that the required exams are the same for both the general EM and pediatric EM rotation.
Access the readings topics and quizzes.
IV. Education Conferences
Throughout your rotation you will be required to attend educational conferences with the Altieri Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship and/or Grand Rounds with the George Washington Emergency Medicine Residency Program. The exact schedule and content of these conferences are to be determined monthly, but they are always excellent opportunities for you to develop your knowledge of Emergency Medicine and develop advanced clinical skills during activities such as Suture Labs and Mock Codes.
You will receive a mid-rotation evaluation letting you know how you are doing during the month. Please remember to hand in 4 (of 8) H&Ps and 6 (of 12) screen shots of the score of completed quizzes by the halfway point of your rotation. This is a requirement if you wish to be considered for Honors. Please email these materials to Dr. Lee, Dr. Dynin, and Jobeth.
Finally, if at any time during your rotation you have any questions or concerns about anything (ranging from compliments on excellent educators to concerns of mistreatment), our doors are always open and we will do our best to respond to you as quick as we can!
We look forward to participating in your education,
Eugene Lee, MD, FACEP, EM Clerkship Director
Maria Dynin, MD, EM Associate Clerkship Director
Jobeth Eichorn, EM Clerkship Coordinator