Evaluation of the educational utility of patient follow-up.
OBJECTIVE
To date, no studies in emergency medicine (EM) have addressed the educational value of the Residency Review Committee for Emergency Medicine's (RRC-EM) requirement for patient follow-up (FU). The authors examined whether performance of patient FU improved EM resident education.


METHODS
All EM resident FU encounters from September 25, 2001, through September 24, 2002, were documented and analyzed. All EM residents at a regional tertiary referral emergency department (ED) initiated patient FU encounters by entering information regarding patients' initial ED presentations into a Web-based follow-up system (WBFUS), subsequently entered FU information, and indicated whether they thought that the specific FU encounters improved their education (yes/no). Supervising faculty members then reviewed the residents' completed FU entries. Blinded to residents' responses regarding educational utility, faculty members evaluated whether they thought the specific FU encounters were educational for the residents (yes/no). Data entered into the WBFUS were then summarized as percentages.


RESULTS
Eight hundred forty-seven FU encounters were completed by 18 EM residents and 29 EM faculty. Ninety-three percent of the FU entries were deemed by at least one evaluator (resident or faculty) to have educational value. Residents found the act of performing FU educational in 81.3% of cases, whereas faculty thought 80.4% were educational for the resident. Although the residents and faculty agreed on the educational value in 75.4% of cases, the overall strength of the agreement was slight to fair (kappa statistic = 0.21).


CONCLUSIONS
This study indicates that EM residents and faculty believe that the act of performing patient FU has educational value for EM residents; however, the interobserver agreement between residents and faculty was low.
Sadosty
Annie T
AT
Department of Emergency Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 55905, USA. sadosty.annie@mayo.edu
Stead
Latha G
LG
Boie
Eric T
ET
Goyal
Deepi G
DG
Weaver
Amy L
AL
Decker
Wyatt W
WW
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000193:education*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008910:Minnesota; D017145:Models, Educational; D011446:Prospective Studies