SAEM REPORTS ACADEMY NEWS

Clerkship Directors in Emergency Medicine

15 years of CDEM: Where We Started, How Far We Have Come

The Clerkship Directors in Emergency Medicine (CDEM) will celebrate its 15th anniversary this spring at the SAEM Annual Meeting. This landmark allows us to reflect on the organization’s history, evolution, and noteworthy accomplishments.

CDEM was founded in 2008 initially as an independent group The idea of CDEM was conceived during an informal meeting of medical student educators at the 2006 American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Scientific Assembly in New Orleans. As astute medical educators do when developing an innovation, the academy’s founding members constructed and administered a needs assessment survey to emergency medicine (EM) clerkship directors and medical educators to identify target areas of focus. With a clear mission statement set forth, CDEM was officially launched.

In its early years, CDEM began initiatives to address the target needs identified by its membership: faculty development, networking, fostering of educational research, the development of educational resources, and a unified voice at the national level. CDEM partnered with the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD) to begin a medical student educator track at the organization’s annual meeting which still exists today. CDEM also published an extensive guide for clerkship directors and medical students in EM called the “Medical Student Educators Handbook.” CDEM has been, and continues to be, supported by CORD and SAEM, and ultimately became the first official SAEM academy.

CDEM has since published numerous educational resources for students and faculty in EM, including the first ever comprehensive national curriculum for third- and fourthyear students in EM as well as pediatric emergency medicine which is continuously updated and housed on the SAEM website. CDEM sponsors educational programming at the SAEM Annual Meeting as well as several educational grants, awards, webinars, and a mentorship program. CDEM routinely partners with other SAEM academies on joint educational programming. CDEM also has representatives in other, national medical education organizations, such as the Alliance for Clinical Education, to ensure the voice of student educators in emergency medicine is heard. As the first SAEM academy, CDEM leadership also developed the academy guidelines that are used and updated for all SAEM Academies. In addition, CDEM worked with the National Board of Medical Examiners to form the NBME Advanced Clinical Examination (ACE) taskforce in the fall of 2011, which led to the creation of the NMBE ACE. More recently, CDEM has led initiatives to develop consensus statements for students and advisors in emergency medicine on the topics of clinical rotations and interviews based on equity and issues related to COVID-19. The academy is proud of its collaborative efforts with these other national organizations and always had a focus on advocating for both the medical student educators as well as the students themselves. CDEM continues to put forth new educational material to prepare students in emergency medicine for their clerkships and future careers in the field. In 2022, CDEM launched a mentorship program for medical educators which is open to all faculty members and targeted for those early on in their medical education careers.

Today, CDEM has 250 members. It is incredible to think that what started as an idea from a small group of EM educators has grown into such a robust community over the years. Looking forward, CDEM is excited to meet new members and enthusiastic EM educators and continue the dedication to being the experts on EM education for medical students. Come say “Hi!” at SAEM and help us celebrate 15 amazing years of growth and help us shape our future!

This retrospective was written by Nicole Dubosh, MD, and Sharon Bord, MD, with special thanks to former CDEM presidents Jonathan Fisher, MD, David Wald, DO, and David Manthey, MD, who provided historical context.

Committee Reports

Membership Committee

Member Benefits Focus: SAEM Online Academic Resources

SAEM Online Academic Resources (SOAR) compiles relevant articles, links, podcasts, and other resources that are available for free to SAEM members. They cover several different topics that can be used to further one’s own interest or expand knowledge in fields gaining a larger share of emergency medicine training.

• Annual meeting content, including video links from the previous four years, in an easy-to-navigate format, sortable by topic, author, and/or year

• DEI Resource Library provides resources to learn more about achieving health equity and eliminating health disparities. The collection covers a wide range of topics and includes a DEI curriculum with tools applicable to the academic EM physician.

• COVID-19 Provider Toolkit provides numerous resources to help care for the vulnerable COVID patient population. This toolkit is particularly helpful when it comes to answering common questions posed by patients during clinical shifts and giving advice that can be incorporated into discharge instructions for patients diagnosed with COVID-19.

• Wellness and Resilience covers a growing collection of SAEM wellness initiatives, partnerships, articles, and other resources supporting the cause of wellness and resilience — a topic that has risen significantly in residency education over the past several years and remains a significant factory in EM physician job satisfaction and burnout. The Stop the Stigma EM Toolkit provides helpful resources to individuals, educators, and institutions interested in joining the cause of breaking down the barriers to mental health care in emergency medicine. NAM Action Collaborative online knowledge hub provides products, strategies, and other resources to improve clinician well-being at both the individual and systems levels. The Clinician Well-Being Knowledge Hub provides a comprehensive repository of articles, research studies, and resources with topics ranging from the systems level to individual level.

Next issue: webinars and podcasts

This report was written by Viral Patel, on behalf of the SAEM Membership Committee. Dr. Patel is assistant professor and assistant residency program director, UMass Chan Medical School, Department of Emergency Medicine.