Department of
Emergency Medicine

Didactics

The WVU EM Residency aims to provide residents and students with a state of the art, evidence-based education in emergency medicine. 

Our conference day is weekly, on Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Residents are protected clinically, regardless of service, in order to attend conference and experience comradery of their EM colleagues.

The residency utilizes a variety of didactic styles in order to ensure interactive discussions and active learning by participants, and prides itself on annually reviewing its curriculum, incorporating resident feedback, and working diligently to continuously improve our didactic offerings. 

See a sample of our content:

Play SheEmergency Grand Rounds
SheEmergency Grand Rounds

The didactic curriculum is designed to cover all topics in the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) Model of the Clinical Practice of Emergency Medicine every 18 months—ensuring that the residents will have an opportunity to have each core content covered at least twice during residency. Examples of conference types and innovations below: 

Grand Rounds 

  • Weekly
  • Delivered by faculty, PGY-3 residents, and nationally recognized guest speakers
  • Lectures aimed at being evidence based, current, and highly relevant to emergency medicine practice 

What does the EBM say?

Conference session focused upon learning to utilize the literature to answer a clinical question in an area of current controversy in emergency medicine.  This conference encourages active engagement with the literature in order to help residents see all sides of a clinical question.

Examples for upcoming topics: What did we learn in COVID? TEG guided resuscitation

Core Content Lecture Series 

  • Lecture series focused upon mastering the core medical knowledge of emergency medicine
  • Lecture given by faculty and residents with the assistance of faculty oversight, allowing for feedback on presentation development and lecture deliverance.
  • Series makes sure you master the knowledge base needed to practice independently and pass your boards
  • Lectures in this series are 30 minutes per topic, mirroring national lecture styles to fit EM attention span and maximize recall

Between Two Ferns

Modeled after the Funny or Die skits starring Zach Galifianakis—this conference series allows our residents to gain insights from specialty consultants that highlight what emergency physicians need to know about a particular topic.  During this conference, faculty members from other departments are interviewed with an EM specific focus on their area of expertise.   

Morbidity and Mortality Conference 

  • Held monthly, focused upon nonjudgmental discussion of medical director selected cases involving significant morbidity or mortality
  • Opportunity for discussion of medical management, quality improvement opportunities, medical error, systems-based issues, and root cause analysis
  • Led by Chief residents, with faculty mentorship 

Journal Club 

  • Held on a monthly basis
  • Goal is to help residents analyze and interpret the medical literature, and determine if the literature is generalizable to their individual practice
  • #TBT sessions highlight past literature that forms the basis of EM practice

Radiology Conference

  • Joint conference led by emergency medicine and emergency radiology faculty
  • Interactive experience focused upon teaching image interpretation from an emergency medicine perspective
  • Images reviewed include CT, plain radiographs, MRI, and ultrasound from actual ED patients 

Board Preparation 

  • Several written board review sessions led by program leadership longitudinally throughout the year, with a focus upon high yield board review information to help prepare residents for in-training examination and board qualifying exams.
  • Oral board preparation sessions are held for each class during the academic year and work to simulate the format during the ABEM examination.  Oral board preparation sessions include the new ABEM E-Oral format.

Joint Conferences

  • Our department works hard to collaborate with other specialties at WVU, and the joint conference series are a reflection of these efforts.
  • Currently, we have monthly collaborative and case-based conferences aimed at improving communication, understanding, and the care we provide for patients with the Departments of Internal Medicine, Neurology, Pediatrics, as well as the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. 

Gregory Seftick Wilderness Medicine Day

  • Annual conference held in honor of Dr. Gregory Seftick, a WVU EM Residency alumnus who passed away while backcountry skiing in the Grand Tetons
  • Capitalizes on the beautiful outdoor location of West Virginia as the perfect place for wilderness medicine
  • Outdoor, full conference day or dedicated individual wellness day, to allow time for mindfulness and rejuvenation in the name of Greg.

Conference Format

Traditionally, we prefer in-person gathering for weekly didactics. In the era of COVID 19 and social distancing, WVU supports Zoom video conferencing platform for all appropriate didactics.