Didactics

The WVU EM Residency aims to provide residents and students with a state of the art, evidence-based education in emergency medicine. 

Our conference day is weekly, on Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Residents are protected clinically, regardless of service, in order to attend conference and experience comradery of their EM colleagues.

The residency utilizes a variety of didactic styles in order to ensure interactive discussions and active learning by participants, and prides itself on annually reviewing its curriculum, incorporating resident feedback, and working diligently to continuously improve our didactic offerings. 

See a sample of our content:

The didactic curriculum is designed to cover all topics in the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) Model of the Clinical Practice of Emergency Medicine every 18 months—ensuring that the residents will have an opportunity to have each core content covered at least twice during residency. Examples of conference types and innovations below: 

Grand Rounds 

--Weekly

--Delivered by faculty, PGY-3 residents, and nationally recognized guest speakers
--Lectures aimed at being evidence based, current, and highly relevant to emergency medicine practice 

What does the EBM say?

--Conference session focused upon learning to utilize the literature to answer a clinical question in an area of current controversy in emergency medicine.  This conference encourages active engagement with the literature in order to help residents see all sides of a clinical question.

Core Content Lecture Series 

--Lecture series focused upon mastering the core medical knowledge of emergency medicine
--Lecture given by faculty and residents with the assistance of faculty oversight, allowing for feedback on presentation development and lecture deliverance.
--Series makes sure you master the knowledge base needed to practice independently and pass your boards
--Lectures in this series are 30 minutes per topic, mirroring national lecture styles to fit EM attention span and maximize recall

 Wake Up! It’s Gameday in Morgantown!

--Wake Up! It’s Gameday in Morgantown! is our brand-new interactive conference that is entirely interactive and makes sure that our residency has fun while learning.  Held approximately every six weeks, teams rotate between interactive sessions including “art gallery” walks where they identify important visual findings, EKG workshops, Jeopardy, dissect the literature in small group EBM sessions and play EM relevant board games such as the popular boarding game, GridlockED.

 Between Two Ferns
--Modeled after the Funny or Die skits starring Zach Galifianakis—this conference series allows our residents to gain insights from specialty consultants that highlight what emergency physicians need to know about a particular topic.  During this conference, faculty members from other departments are interviewed with an EM specific focus on their area of expertise.  

 Morbidity and Mortality Conference 

--Held monthly, focused upon nonjudgmental discussion of medical director selected cases involving significant morbidity or mortality
--Opportunity for discussion of medical management, quality improvement opportunities, medical error, systems-based issues, and root cause analysis
--Led by Chief residents, with faculty mentorship 

 Journal Club 

--Held on a monthly basis
--Goal is to help residents analyze and interpret the medical literature, and determine if the literature is generalizable to their individual practice

 WVU EM Clinicopathologic Case Conference (CPC)

--This interactive conference features a case based format where senior residents present limited information to a team of two attending physicians regarding the initial presentation of a challenging case.  The attendings (who are blinded to the final diagnosis) then provide insight on how they would approach constructing the differential diagnosis, additional labs/imaging they would need to help clarify and pick their most likely diagnosis. 

--The session concludes with the residents revealing the final diagnosis and course of the patient with important teaching points embedded for all attendees.

 EMS Conference

--Presented by the Division of Prehospital Medicine on a quarterly basis

--Provides updates on new pre hospital protocols in West Virginia and guidance on how to provide on-line medical command by reviewing actual pre hospital medical command calls received in the last quarter

--Feedback for the group on how to best provide guidance in these difficult situations is provided in a psychologically safe, supportive environment

Peds EM Conferences

--The core content of PEM is divided into topics covered over 18 months and taught by the primary PEM faculty

--Series leverages the expertise of our fellowship trained pediatric faculty to illustrate the core content of pediatric emergency medicine in an engaging fashion

 Cadaver Labs

--Each class has a cadaver lab annually that provides critical experience with important procedures like cricothyrotomy, needle decompression, finger thoracostomy, chest tube placement, central line placement, lateral canthotomy, thoracotomy, and REBOA

--Cadaver labs utilize the cutting edge perfused cadaver model developed by faculty in the WVU Critical Care and Trauma Institute and are co-taught by EM and Trauma faculty

Joint Conferences

--Our department works hard to collaborate with other specialties at WVU, and the joint conference series are a reflection of these efforts.

--Currently, we have monthly collaborative and case-based conferences aimed at improving communication, understanding, and the care we provide for patients with the Departments of Internal Medicine and the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.

Asynchronous Content/Radiology Curriculum

--Selected conference weeks are only 4 hours in length and allow completion of asynchronous material outside of conference time

--Asynchronous material may include curated content from Foundations of Emergency Medicine as well as a structured emergency medicine developed radiology curriculum from RapidRads

Kahoot! Quiz Bowl

--Held every four weeks during a 15 minute pause in conference

--Resident trivia teams answer questions on recent core content presentations to reinforce key points presented over the last month of conference

--Teaching points provided by residency leadership/medical education fellows and end of the year prize awarded to the winning team

Conference Format

Conference is held in person each week in the WVU Health Sciences Center, which adjoins our primary training site, J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital.  We do provide a hybrid zoom option for residents to attend post night shift or while on elective rural rotations.  In order to maximize wellness, residents are given one virtual pass per quarter and may attend virtually up to four times per year.