P001: Continuing professional development and faculty development: launching continuous practice enhancement for academic emergency physicians

Abstract

Innovation Concept: Emergency medicine physicians must maintain a broad knowledge base and procedural skillset while fulfilling their academic roles as teachers, researchers and administrators. Most academic departments do not have a regular, affordable, formal continuing professional development (CPD) and faculty development (FD) curriculum for their staff. We set out to design and implement a novel continuous practice enhancement program to address this issue. Methods: Strategic planning by the Ottawa academic Department of EM identified CPD and FD as priorities. A program was created to support high quality, monthly CPD/FD courses provided by physicians. We had 5 goals: (1) enhance clinical and academic skills, (2) disseminate group best practices, (3) sustain skills in high impact/low frequency scenarios, (4) support physician academic careers, and (5) acquire new procedural skills. A CPD/FD Committee composed of local meded experts and experienced clinical teachers was tasked with overseeing the creation and evaluation of these sessions. Curriculum, Tool or Material: The longitudinal curriculum was informed by perceived needs (group survey), ascribed needs (M&M rounds, physician metrics and departmental leadership priorities) and participant feedback. The committee identified local experts to present on their areas of expertise in order to promote group best practice. Topics to-date have included clinical skills updates, teaching and coaching strategies and academic career planning. A comprehensive monthly simulation-based curriculum was rolled out simultaneously to give participants the opportunity to develop crisis resource management and critical care skills. Except for sessions requiring advanced equipment or cadavers, sessions are financed by academic funds and free for participants. Conclusion: Faculty academic learning and engagement is an important goal and participation in this curriculum is reviewed at each physician's annual reappointment. To-date, 18 physicians (21% of our group) have presented topics and 92% of physicians have participated in at least one session with 63% having attended three or more. Evaluations have been overwhelmingly positive, and a recent survey identified the CPD/FD program as a significant contributor to our physicians’ wellness. We introduced an innovative, structured CPD/FD program in response to perceived and ascribed needs of our physicians and departmental leadership. Our successful CPD/FD curriculum represents a model for other departments who are considering similar initiatives.