Evaluation of the ability of emergency medicine residents in teaching and supervising emergency medicine interns

BACKGROUND: Approximately 25% of the residents’ time in each shift is allocated to educating lower-level assistants and interns. Assistants have played a major role in interns’ education. AIM: To assess the teaching abilities of emergency medicine assistants in the training and monitoring of medical interns and undergraduate students. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was performed in 2015 at the emergency center of Imam Reza hospital in Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. We employed a researcher-made questionnaire to search the capability of emergency medicine residents to assess the teaching capabilities of emergency medicine residents to interns. This questionnaire was completed by 106 interns. The Validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by three specialist experts and reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha (0.94). This questionnaire consists of 24 questions in six areas. The analysis was performed by descriptive statistics using SPSS 16. RESULT: The study showed that the least favorable score was related to “residents get feedback on each shift” and the highest score was given to “a friendly relationship with the Interns and residents”. CONCLUSION: Considering the key role of residents in the education and training of future healthcare specialists, training interventions and allocating sufficient time to the proper education of different members of healthcare teams and medical students could largely contribute to the development of clinical training systems.