Our clinical and didactic curriculum is one of our biggest strengths as a program! We are very proud that both our curriculums are heavily shaped by resident feedback. Our curriculum ideally balances our ‘tried-and-true’ methods with a dynamic and evolving approach to training quality EM physicians. We believe in the adult-learning theory of education and as such our didactics include a large amount of small group learning, an emphasis on shorter lectures (15-30 min sessions are a regular thing!), case-based learning, simulation, and frequent oral board examination practice that will be evolving given the new ABEM test; read more in the sections that follow!
Shaped by regular feedback from our current and former residents, we are proud to highlight our block schedule and some key curricular features.
| PGY-1 | PGY-2 | PGY-3 |
| Orientation/EM – 1 block | EM – 9.0 blocks (each month includes 1-2 CMH shifts & EMS) | EM – 10 blocks (each month includes 1-2 CMH shifts & EMS) |
| EM – 4 blocks (including EMS) | Elective – 0.5 block | Community EM at UH LW- 1 block |
| Critical Care Medicine at UH/TMC (as Supervisor) – 1 block | Elective – 1 block | |
| Ultrasound – 1 block | Community EM at SLH – 0.5 block | Pediatric EM at CMH – 1 block |
| Critical Care Medicine at UHTMC – 1 block | Pediatric ICU at CMH – 1 block | |
| Pulmonary Critical Care at SLH -1 block | Pediatric EM at CMH – 1 block | |
| Neurosurgical ICU at SLH – 0.5 block | ||
| Cardiology at SLH – 0.5 block | ||
| OB at UHTMC- 0.5 block | ||
| NICU at UHTMC– 0.5 block | ||
| Trauma Surgery at UHTMC – 1 block | ||
| Anesthesiology at SLH – 0.5 block | ||
| ED/MSK at UHTMC – 0.5 block | ||
| Pediatric EM at CMH – 1 block |
1 Block = 4 weeks
Clinical Curriculum Highlights:
EMS:
Our EMS training is a longitudinal experience with varying responsibilities per PG year. Our faculty members are the medical directors for the Kansas City, Missouri Fire Department giving our residents unique opportunities to experience what leading a large pre-hospital system entails! Experiences include: ambulance and medical director ride-alongs, QI/protocol reviews, and a hands-on EMS field day. All our residents become certified as base-station physicians and provide pre-hospital direction for a large urban paramedic system. Our residents also have unique opportunities to participate as healthcare providers at mass gatherings and citywide disaster events. Our residents have staffed medical tents at the Kansas City Chiefs championship parades, the NFL Draft, and concerts that are held at GEHA/Arrowhead Stadium.
Our department also leads a paramedicine training program and additional teaching opportunities within that program are available for those interested. Aeromedical experience is not available.
Pediatrics:
Our primary site for pediatric training is at Children’s Mercy Hospital (located across the street from our home, University Health), which is consistently recognized as one of the top Children’s hospitals in the country. Our pediatric experience is both focused and longitudinal. The curriculum includes dedicated rotations in the PICU, NICU, and CMH Main ED (1 full block/year). Our PGY2 and PGY3 residents continue to work 1-2 CMH ED shifts/block while rotating in the UH/TMC ED. This provides continual pediatrics exposure and the ability to see the “seasonal” illnesses that kids often experience. CMH has one of the busiest EDs in Kansas City and was one of the first established Pediatric Emergency Medicine fellowships in the country. Our residents consistently say they feel comfortable caring for ill children by the end of their training.
Ultrasound: Who doesn’t love using ultrasound!? We sure do!! With the addition of a 3rd Ultrasound-fellowship trained faculty In 2022, we expanded our ED ultrasound rotation to a 4-week rotation. We also have ultrasound-based education each month in our didactic and hands-on curriculum. We enjoy ultrasound so much we gave Ultrasound its own page! Please see our dedicated Ultrasound section to GAIN more details.
Elective program features: Residents are encouraged to individualize their elective time based on educational experience needs/interests. The program works with residents to optimize elective time for research or other educational experiences. Recent electives include: Wellness, ICU, toxicology, sedation/procedures, oral surgery, radiology (pediatric and adult), ultrasound, research, education/simulation, and administration/ED operations. In the past, we have had residents venture to various locations most recently being Jackson Hole, Wyoming, China, and Thailand. With adequate notice, rotations at different locations can be arranged.
EM Department Electives
Wellective
The elective is personalized to optimize resident wellness, however general guidelines are provided. The resident will develop a plan to improve wellness on an individual, group, program, and/or national level, in light of the unique challenges emergency physicians face. As a program, UMKC EM Wellness endorses the pillars of community service, career development, and healthy lifestyles, which are suggested topics to explore during this elective. Other encouraged areas of wellness include reflection, gratitude, stress response, mental health, sleep hygiene, and physicians as mothers/fathers/human-beings… the possibilities are endless on this elective! The elective director supports the resident with their unique goals and provides supporting resources. This is a 2 week elective.
Street Medicine- new in 24-25’
The Street Medicine Elective allows residents to get out of the ED to take care of patients experiencing homelessness in the KC metro area. Residents will venture out on a bus with a team of providers, nurses, pharmacists and volunteers with an organization called Care Beyond the Boulevard. Residents will also become more familiar with resources available to this vulnerable patient population by visiting a local crisis center and a homeless shelter. This elective will increase awareness of the healthcare related challenges that those experiencing homelessness face, and how we can better serve them in and out of the ED. This is a 2 week elective.
Addiction Medicine- new in 24-25’
This resident elective assists emergency medicine residents in developing an approach to the assessment and treatment of patients with substance use disorder. Residents learn current evidence-based strategies for managing patients with substance use disorders. This experience will enhance the resident’s ability to care for patients in the Emergency Department who present with substance use disorder. This is a 2 week elective and is in partnership with our Dept of Psychiatry.
Mentorship and feedback: We provide robust mentorship, advising, and opportunities for bidirectional and multisource feedback. Each resident is assigned a PGY2 and faculty advisor at the start of the residency program to assist and guide the resident throughout training. The residents meet with their advisor biannually. The residency leadership team also meets with each resident biannually to discuss wellness, evaluations, and the resident’s progress towards graduation. Residents receive regular performance feedback including face-face shift evaluations, procedure evaluations, monthly faculty consensus evaluations, biannual Milestones assessments, and yearly peer-peer evaluations. Residents are also given the opportunity to confidentially evaluate the program and faculty on an annual basis.
Wellness and Community Engagement
We have a robust wellness program that includes didactics and special conferences, social events, and book clubs. Since before covid we dedicate the 5th Thursday of every month to resident wellness and our department approved an annual residency wellness budget. Wellness-focused conference days include late start times, a mix of wellness-related learning focusing on our 3 wellness pillars and experiences chosen by the wellness committee to be fun and relaxing and a way to destress and connect with peers.
Didactic topics include career planning, financial wellness, and resilience. Entering PGY-1 residents experience a wellness-focused onboarding with social activities as well as a full-day session led by our department wellness committee. A biannual wellness survey for faculty and residents is done. We love wellness so much that we even have a “Well-elective” that residents can participate in. Please see our dedicated wellness section for more details.
Residents Quality Management Meeting: This bi-monthly meeting facilitates communication about residency program activities. Residents are provided an updated dashboard that includes performance review information, status on procedure logging, and meeting residency requirements. We discuss opportunities for improvement within the residency and between EM residents, faculty, nursing, off-service rotations, and support staff. Resident feedback to improve processes and their educational experiences in the ED and on other clinical rotations is solicited and discussed.
“The program has a strong and established presence at the hospital. The attendings are supportive, the residents are friendly, and it’s a great learning environment.”
Eric Canaday, DO
Class of 2014
Emergency Medicine Conferences
We strive to make our didactic conferences interactive, interesting, and clinically relevant. To that end, we continue to incorporate adult learning techniques such as simulation, small group learning, case-based discussions, and the “flipped classroom” approach in addition to traditional didactics. Each month has a dedicated systems-based theme. The simulation and “hands on days”, journal clubs, and theme of the month sessions follow the monthly theme (for example: CV, Neuro, ID, etc). Each year we start with Resuscitation/Procedural basics in July. Then,the theme varies each month but are designed to return every 2 years. Residents have a suggested reading schedule using Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine as their core text. For board style practice questions, we use the ROSH Review question bank. Each month residents compete a ROSH test that is related to the monthly theme. For 2024-2025, we have continued with a mix of fully in-person and fully virtual conference days. We have developed a comprehensive Google Education website for our residency, which houses our curriculum and suggested reading schedule, resident dashboards, calendars, forms, and multiple other learning resources. We can go on and on! Below is a brief description of our regularly held educational sessions.
Case Conference: Weekly conference that pairs one EM attending and EM resident who present an interesting clinical case aimed at highlighting key issues pertinent to emergency medicine. Real-life cases from the ED are presented in an interactive manner with the audience, with a focus on problem solving. We implement an oral boards format/style of questioning where a randomly selected resident audience member is chosen to work through the case, with additional audience participation. It is followed by a brief 30 minute didactic from the presenting resident.
Theme of the month reviews: These reviews were revamped in 2019 with resident input and have been a hit! During the 1 hour session, 3 residents will present for 15-20 minutes on 3 different focused, EM relevant topics, that fall under the monthly systems-based theme. A secondary objective of this session is for residents to hone their presentation skills- with only 20 minutes they must work on delivering a concise but memorable talk. The topics are chosen to cover the core EM content of the Model of Clinical Practice of Emergency Medicine over a 2-year period (available on ABEM website). Topics are presented by the residents with faculty input and oversight.
Faculty Lecture Series: Given by our emergency medicine faculty. Faculty discuss Core Content of EM, including areas of their expertise. Interactive discussion, Board-style review questions, current literature review, case-based discussions, and simulation experiences are some of the adult learning strategies used. The faculty may use an audience-response system to get “real-time” feedback to ensure that residents understand key concepts.
Resident Education Cases: 30 minute clinically based sessions given by faculty. The focus is on practical topics such as procedures, imaging, ultrasound, or ECG interpretation that tie into our “theme of the month”. We often use the EM Foundations Courses (click here to learn more) for these sessions.
EM Foundations Sessions: 1 hour case-based learning sessions where 4 faculty lead simultaneous small groups through 2, 30-minute cases. The cases are relevant to the monthly theme, PG year specific (tailored to your needs!) and are related to some of our asynchronous learning opportunities (see more below). We use the EM Foundations Courses and online curriculum (click here to learn more) for these sessions.
EM Journal Club: Monthly conference that discusses recent journal articles from the EM literature, with a focus on critically interpreting the literature and developing an understanding of evidence-based medicine. A team approach is used with a PGY-1, 2 and 3 resident presenting different aspects of the article and key concepts with the guidance and input of our departmental Research Director and a faculty mentor.
Emergency Medicine Foundations: We are avid users of the online EM Foundations curriculum. This flipped-classroom model is designed to provide small group case-based learning on essential topics in emergency medicine. We provide EM foundations sessions at least bimonthly. We also host special EM Foundations “Lunch and Learns” for PGY-1 residents. We cater lunch and select cases that are “must know” for PGY-1 EM residents.
Wellness Series: We dedicate the 5th Thursday conferences to resident wellness-read more above or on our wellness page!
Emergency Medicine Morbidity and Mortality conference: Monthly case-based conferences that focus on improving patient safety and quality improvement and system changes. A Chief Resident moderates and leads the case-based presentation and collaborates with a PGY-2 who presents relevant teaching points.
Emergency Medicine/Internal Medicine Morbidity and Mortality conference: Interdisciplinary quarterly conference that emphasizes a team approach to patient care, including quality improvement practices and patient safety.
Multidisciplinary Trauma conference: Monthly conference with the Department of Surgery that emphasizes the institutional teamwork necessary to care for a trauma patient from the pre-hospital setting to the Emergency Department to Surgery to Intensive Care to Rehab to discharge. Includes didactics from local, regional, and national content experts in trauma care.
Emergency Medicine/Trauma Services Morbidity and Mortality conference: Monthly joint conference that emphasizes a team approach to patient care, including quality improvement practices and patient safety.
Pediatric conferences: Pediatric emergency medicine faculty from Children’s Mercy Hospital give regular monthly didactic conferences over core content. Pediatric simulation and sedation workshops are also provided annually. In addition, we incorporate pediatric activities into most of our simulation activities.
Additional Conference experiences: We also try to “break up the routine” on occasion. Recent examples of more innovative opportunities include: a Wilderness event with sessions on mass casualty management and field procedures and a procedural “boot camp” for our PGY1 class focusing on frequently performed procedures such as lumbar punctures, ultrasound-guided IV access, and slit-lamp usage.
Asynchronous learning: Asynchronous learning is an important part of providing flexibility for our residents. We are excited to provide many opportunities for learning to count towards your conference attendance! Each month we provide an opportunity for asynchronous learning before our EM Foundations sessions- we send out the suggested reading and related ROSH test and attestation forms to make it easy to participate and get an extra hour of conference credit. We also utilize the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM U) site; an on-line open-access, peer-reviewed site with many learning modules for which you can receive asynchronous credit. Residents also have opportunity for asynchronous credit through Journal Club assignments, on-line teaching modules, and off-site conferences.
We continue a new smartphone application-based ECG curriculum for PGY-1 residents that includes opportunities for asynchronous credit and is anchored to their cardiology rotation. This curriculum was developed by our Chief and then Medical Education Fellow Dr. Elberts.