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Objective: Transitioning to emergency medicine (EM) internship from medical school can be difficult. While prior investigations have evaluated pre-graduation or early internship boot camps to ease the transition, there is no previously described curriculum for the time between Match Day and start of internship. To address this gap, we designed a curriculum to be administered using the social media platform Slack. With our Slack curriculum, newly-matched interns can refresh their clinical knowledge before internship with collaborative learning via clinical cases. Our objective was to test the hypothesis that the Slack curriculum would increase the self-reported comfort of newly-matched interns with several EM learning objectives. Design and Method: This was a prospective, observational study at St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Northwestern University, and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School EM residency programs. The population was newly-matched EM interns, with no exclusion criteria, and participation was voluntary. The curriculum is published at (https://jetem.org/socialmedia_inn/). Subjects completed a pre-survey assessing comfort with several aspects of EM. The curriculum was implemented between Match Day and the first day of internship in 2018. Interns completed a post-survey that re-assessed comfort and elicited feedback on the curriculum. Results: All 36 interns completed the pre-survey and 26 completed the post-survey (Table1). Participants reported a statistically significant increase in comfort with identifying airway anatomy and physiology (p = 0.01). Mean comfort increased, but was statistically significant for all other objectives. Sixteen of 26 post-survey participants agreed that Slack was an effective way to present the curriculum, and only five disagreed (Figure1). Conclusion: When presented prior to the start of residency, the curriculum significantly increased self-reported intern comfort with one EM learning objective. A majority of interns felt that Slack was an effective way to present the curriculum. Limitations included small sample size, possibly hindering detection of statistically significant changes. Interns who found the curriculum less useful may have been less likely to complete the post-survey. This study was not designed to measure improvements in clinical knowledge. Future directions will address these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Transitioning from medical school to internship is challenging. While several curricula for medical students and interns have been proposed during this transition period, there has not been a large-scale self assessment of incoming emergency medicine (EM) interns’ preparedness for EM milestones. While many medical schools and EM residencies host “boot camps” or other intensive orientation programs for EM-bound students, having knowledge of incoming EM residents’ self-perceived strengths and weaknesses will help clerkship directors and EM residency leadership better serve this group of learners. Milestones in EM are used in the United States to measure residents’ progress and determine competence at residency completion.4 Incoming interns are expected to have achieved level 1 milestones by the time they enter residency, to have achieved level 2 milestones between the first and second year, and to have achieved level 4 milestones before completion of residency. We reached out to 151 newly- matched interns at 11 different sites to ask about their self-perceived “preparedness” for levels 1, 2, and 3 of our eight selected EM milestones (numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, and 12). Design and Method: This was a prospective, cross-sectional study of 151 newly-matched pre-interns at 11 EM residency programs. We included all newly-matched interns at each program. Interns were invited via email from their programs to complete a voluntary, anonymous survey prior to the start of residency. The survey used a Likert scale (1 = very unprepared to 5 = extremely prepared) to assess self-reported preparedness to perform levels 1 and 2 of milestones 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, and 12. Milestones were chosen based on ease of teaching in an EM case curriculum that was later implemented. Results: A total of 126 pre-interns completed the survey (response rate 83.4%). Mean and standard deviation values are reported in Figures 1 and 2]. Conclusion: Subjects reported highest level of preparedness for emergency stabilization (PC1), and lowest levels of preparedness for airway management (PC10) and pharmacological management (PC5). The data suggest that teachers of fourth-year medical students and new EM interns may want to emphasize milestones 5 and 10 early in internship or late in medical school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]