The impact of fellowship‐trained medical toxicology faculty on emergency medicine resident in‐training examination scores

BACKGROUND: The American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) In Training Exam (ITE) gauges residents' medical knowledge and has been shown to correlate with subsequent performance on the ABEM board qualifying examination. It is common for emergency medicine (EM) residencies to employ subspecialty‐trained faculty members with the expectation of improved resident education and subspecialty knowledge. We hypothesized that the presence of subspecialty faculty in toxicology would increase residents' scores on the toxicology portion of the ITE. METHODS: We assessed ABEM ITE scores at our institution from 2013–2022 and compared these to national data. The exposure of interest was the absence or presence of fellowship‐trained toxicology faculty. The primary outcome was performance on the toxicology portion of the ITE, and secondary outcome was overall performance on the exam. RESULTS: Residents who had ≥1 toxicology faculty were 37% (95% CI: 1.01–1.87) more likely to surpass the national average for toxicology scores, and those who had ≥2 toxicology faculty were 77% (95% CI: 1.28–2.44) more likely to surpass the national average for toxicology scores on the ABEM ITE. With the presence of ≥2 toxicology faculty, there was also an increase in toxicology score by years in training, with residents being 63% (95% CI: 1.01–2.64), 68% (95% CI: 1.08–2.61), and 92% (95% CI: 1.01–3.63) more likely to surpass the national average for toxicology score in first, second, and third years of residency, respectively. There was no significant relationship between the presence of toxicology faculty and the overall ABEM ITE scores. CONCLUSIONS: The presence of fellowship‐trained toxicology faculty positively impacted residents' performance on the toxicology portion of the ABEM ITE but did not significantly impact the overall score. With the presence of ≥2 toxicology faculty we noted an improvement in toxicology scores throughout the 3 years of training, indicating that an individual rotation or educational block is probably less important than spaced repetition through a longitudinal curriculum.