CAEP 2016 Academic Symposium: How to have an impact as an emergency medicine educator and scholar

Advancing the Clinician Educator Career Pathway in Oncology

PURPOSE:

Education is an important component of cancer care; however, most clinician educators (CEs) receive little formal training in this area. Little is known about the factors that influence oncologists to pursue a career as a CE. The primary objective of this study was to determine the current state of oncologists' perceptions regarding the clinician educator role.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

A one-time cross-sectional survey was administered to program directors/associate program directors (PDs/APDs) and fellows in November 2021. The survey was meant to elicit their perceptions regarding the CE role, training opportunities, and barriers to a career as a CE.

RESULTS:

The surveys were completed by a total of 2,134 oncology fellows and 88 PDs/APDs. Most PDs/APDs were female (52%), were associate professors (42%), and considered themselves a CE (82%). Over one-third of PDs/APDs reported no formal educator training (67%) and did not have a CE track for fellows at their institution (76%). The majority of PDs/APDs (80%) perceived the CE track to be a viable career pathway. Over half of fellows (56%) perceived the CE track to be a viable career pathway. Approximately one-third (62%) reported receiving CE training during their residency/fellowship. The top reported barriers to a career in medical education were a lack of jobs and opportunity for future promotions.

CONCLUSION:

Oncology PDs/APDs and fellows perceive the CE to be a viable career track. Greater advocacy efforts are needed to raise awareness about this career path.

An environmental scan of academic pediatric emergency medicine at Canadian medical schools: Identifying variability across Canada

OBJECTIVE

To complement our environmental scan of academic emergency medicine departments, we conducted a similar environmental scan of the academic pediatric emergency medicine programs offered by the Canadian medical schools.

METHODS

We developed an 88-question form, which was distributed to pediatric academic leaders at each medical school. The responses were validated via email to ensure that the questions were answered completely and consistently.

RESULTS

Fourteen of the 17 Canadian medical schools have some type of pediatric emergency medicine academic program. None of the pediatric emergency medicine units have full departmental status, while nine are divisions, two are sections, and three have no status. Canadian academic pediatric emergency medicine is practised at 13 major teaching hospitals and one specialized pediatric emergency department. There are 394 pediatric emergency medicine faculty members, including 13 full professors and 64 associate professors. Eight sites regularly take pediatric undergraduate clinical clerks, and all 14 provide resident education. Fellowship training is offered at 10 sites, with five offering advanced pediatric emergency medicine fellowship training. Half of the sites have at least one physician with a Master's degree in education, totalling 18 faculty members across Canada. There are 31 clinical researchers with salary support at nine universities. Eleven sites have published peer-reviewed papers (n=423) in the past five years, ranging from two to 102 per site. Annual academic budgets range from $10,000 to $2,607,515.

CONCLUSIONS

This comprehensive review of academic activities in pediatric emergency medicine across Canada identifies the variability across the country, including the recognition of sites above and below the national average, which may prompt change at individual sites. Sharing these academic practices may inspire sites to provide more support to teachers, educators, and researchers.

Curated Collections for Educators: Five Key Papers on Evaluating Digital Scholarship

Traditionally, scholarship that was recognized for promotion and tenure consisted of clinical research, bench research, and grant funding. Recent trends have allowed for differing approaches to scholarship, including digital publication. As increasing numbers of trainees and faculty turn to online educational resources, it is imperative to critically evaluate these resources. This article summarizes five key papers that address the appraisal of digital scholarship and describes their relevance to junior clinician educators and faculty developers. In May 2017, the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Faculty Incubator program focused on the topic of digital scholarship, providing and discussing papers relevant to the topic. We augmented this list of papers with further suggestions by guest experts and by an open call via Twitter for other important papers. Through this process, we created a list of 38 papers in total on the topic of evaluating digital scholarship. In order to determine which of these papers best describe how to evaluate digital scholarship, the authorship group assessed the papers using a modified Delphi approach to build consensus. In this paper we present the five most highly rated papers from our process about evaluating digital scholarship. We summarize each paper and discuss its specific relevance to junior faculty members and to faculty developers. These papers provide a framework for assessing the quality of digital scholarship, so that junior faculty can recommend high-quality educational resources to their trainees. These papers help guide educators on how to produce high quality digital scholarship and maximize recognition and credit in respect to receiving promotion and tenure.