S A E M
Newsletter of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine July/August 2005 Volume XVII, Number 4
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Looking Back to Look Forward At times of transition, the Romans invoked their god of gates and doors, Janus. Typically drawn with two faces, Janus contemplated the happenings of an old year while looking forward to the new. Reflecting on our successful Annual Meeting in New York City Glenn C. Hamilton, MD with nearly 2,200 attendees, it is important as we move forward to acknowledge the significant efforts and accomplishments over the last year. Seven SAEM staff, 11 Board members and nearly 250 individuals on 20 different Task Forces and Committees contributed greatly to the progress of this Society in 2004-2005. The 27 Interest Groups also helped move this academic enterprise toward its mission of advancing patient care through education and research. At the Business Meeting, a listing of these activities and advances developed by Carey Chisholm and the staff was circulated to those in attendance. This list is worthy of sharing with the entire membership for your information and hopefully sense of accomplishment. The activities are many and the hours behind them number in the thousands, but the energy and enthusiasm supporting the mission and goals of this Society remain vital as we enter into another year of promise.
May 2004 – May 2005 Actions Operations/Member Services ● Reaffirmed SAEM’s mission and vision statements. ● Developed 5-year plan for the organization. This will assist with resource allocation and the development of annual committee and task force goals. ● Reviewed all policy and position statements. Assigned automatic review dates to those that were without change or revised, and identified several that will require further work. Those have been assigned through the committee and task force objectives. ● Developed the organization’s first membership survey. This information will assist future BODs in decision-making and prioritization to better serve our members. ● Hired our first ever on-site web programmer, beginning January 2005 ● Hired one additional FTE administrative staff for the national office ● Transitioned to the Electronic Editorial System (EES) for AEM manuscripts.
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Development of Web-based Question Bank for EM Students Emily L. Senecal, MD Stanford University Michael S. Beeson, MD, MBA Akron City Hospital Stephen H. Thomas, MD, MPH Massachusetts General Hospital Medical Student Question and Answer Bank SAEM Undergraduate Committee The majority of required clinical rotations for medical students employ a standardized “shelf” exam to evaluate medical student performance at the conclusion of a rotation. The discipline of EM lacks such a standardized evaluation tool. The reasons for this are numerous and include the fact that standardizing core content for a medical student EM rotation is a challenging task. One of SAEM’s goals over the last few years has been to develop a testing and/or evaluation tool for medical students rotating through EM. After several years of hard work by many members of the SAEM Undergraduate Education Committee (UEC), we are pleased to announce the arrival of an interactive web-based testing tool for students of EM. Over the past four years, the UEC has put forth efforts to develop a question bank available through the SAEM website to all EM clerkship directors to facilitate the teaching and evaluation of medical students during their rotation in EM. The project began with the goal of generating 500 multiple choice questions covering a broad range of topics within EM. Individual emergency physicians from teaching hospitals undertook the writing of the questions. All questions underwent a minimum of two revisions by writers other than the original author. These initial efforts were successful in generating over 500 multiple-choice questions, approximately one-quarter of which are accompanied by images, including EKGs, radiographic studies, and photographs. Answers include brief explanations of the correct answer, as well as text or literature references for further reading. Once the questions were developed and edited, efforts were directed at turning this large document into an interactive web-based testing tool. Through the financial support of the Board of Directors, the UEC was able to purchase software designed specifically to administer tests. Using the software, known as LXR Test 6.0, the questions were transformed from a word-processing document into an interactive on-line question bank in the format of individual tests covering a broad range of topics. The tests are available through the SAEM website at www.saemtests.com. Two of the 26 tests are available without a password. The remainder of the tests are passwordprotected and are only accessible by medical students once
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“to improve patient care by advancing research and education in emergency medicine”