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The Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors’ (CORD) Academy for Scholarship in Education in Emergency Medicine was founded in 2010 to support emergency medicine educators, advance educational methods and scholarship in Emergency Medicine, and foster collaboration among members. As one of the first academies housed in a specialty organization, the CORD Academy concept has been successfully implemented, and has now grown to thirty members in the categories of Distinguished Educator, Academy Scholar, and Academy Member in four focus areas (Teaching and Evaluation; Enduring Educational Materials, Educational Leadership, and Education Research). In this update, the Academy leadership describes the revised academy structure, evolution of the application, and reports the activities of the three Academy pillars – membership/awards/recognition; faculty development and structured programs; and education research and scholarship – in the first five years of the Academy.

Objectives: Effective feedback is critical to medical education. Little is known about emergency medicine (EM) attending and resident physician perceptions of feedback. The focus of this study was to examine perceptions of the educational feedback that attending physicians give to residents in the clinical environment of the emergency department (ED). The authors compared attending and resident satisfaction with real-time feedback and hypothesized that the two groups would report different overall satisfaction with the feedback they currently give and receive in the ED. Methods: This observational study surveyed attending and resident physicians at 17 EM residency programs through web-based surveys. The primary outcome was overall satisfaction with feedback in the ED, ranked on a 10-point scale. Additional survey items addressed specific aspects of feedback. Responses were compared using a linear generalized estimating equation (GEE) model for overall satisfaction, a logistic GEE model for dichotomized responses, and an ordinal logistic GEE model for ordinal responses. Results: Three hundred seventy-three of 525 (71%) attending physicians and 356 of 596 (60%) residents completed the survey. Attending physicians were more satisfied with overall feedback (mean score 5.97 vs. 5.29, p < 0.001) and with timeliness of feedback (odds ratio [OR] = 1.56, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.23 to 2.00; p < 0.001) than residents. Attending physicians were also more likely to rate the quality of feedback as very good or excellent for positive feedback, constructive feedback, feedback on procedures, documentation, management of ED flow, and evidence-based decision-making. Attending physicians reported time constraints as the top obstacle to giving feedback and were more likely than residents to report that feedback is usually attending initiated (OR = 7.09, 95% CI = 3.53 to 14.31; p < 0.001). Conclusions: Attending physician satisfaction with the quality, timeliness, and frequency of feedback given is higher than resident physician satisfaction with feedback received. Attending and resident physicians have differing perceptions of who initiates feedback and how long it takes to provide effective feedback. Knowledge of these differences in perceptions about feedback may be used to direct future educational efforts to improve feedback in the ED. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Developed by the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD), the standardized direct observation assessment tool (SDOT) is an evaluation instrument used to assess residents’ clinical skills in the emergency department (ED). In a previous study examining the inter-rater agreement of the tool, faculty scored simulated resident–patient encounters. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the inter-rater agreement of the SDOT in real-time evaluations of residents in the ED. Methods: This was a multi-center, prospective, observational study in which faculty raters were paired to simultaneously observe and independently evaluate a resident’s clinical performance using the SDOT. Data collected from eight emergency medicine (EM) residency programs produced 99 unique resident–patient encounters and reported on 26 individual behaviors related to specific core competencies, global evaluation scores for each core competency, and an overall clinical competency score. Inter-rater agreement was assessed using percentage agreement analyses with three constructs: exact agreement, liberal agreement, and binary (pass/fail) agreement. Results: Inter-rater agreement between faculty raters varied according to category of measure used. Exact agreement ranged from poor to good, depending on the measure: the overall competency score (good) , the competency score for each of the six core competencies (poor to good), and the individual item scores (fair to very good). Liberal agreement and binary agreement were excellent for the overall competency score and the competency score for each of the six core competencies and very good to excellent for the individual item scores. Conclusions: The SDOT demonstrated excellent inter-rater agreement when analyzed with liberal agreement and when dichotomized as a pass/fail measure and fair to good agreement for most measures with exact agreement. The SDOT can be useful and reliable when evaluating residents’ clinical skills in the ED, particularly as it relates to marginal performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]