The Emergency Informatics Transition Course: A Flexible, Online Course in Health Informatics for Emergency Medicine Clinicians and Trainees
Each year, academic efforts related to Innovations in Emergency Medicine Education (IEME) are presented as part of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Annual Meeting. Submission for consideration for presentation as IEME exhibits follows a different format, timeline, and judging process from the scientific abstracts. This year, we received 83 IEME submissions and accepted 20 for presentation. It is with pleasure that the editors of AcademicEmergency Medicine publish in this issue the abstracts of the IEME exhibits that will be presented at the 2009 SAEM Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, May 14–17. These abstracts are published as they were received, with minimal editing, corrections, or clarifications; the authors are solely responsible for their content.
Abstract
Increasing emphasis on health information technology (HIT) as a mechanism to control costs and increase quality in health care is accelerating the diffusion of more advanced health information systems into emergency medicine. This has created an increased demand for informatics-trained emergency physicians to provide clinical input. In response to this need we partnered with the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) to adapt an existing informatics educational program to emergency medicine. The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) 10X10 program is an effort to provide formal informatics training to 10,000 clinicians by 2010. Our first AMIA-ACEP 10X10 Emergency Informatics Transition Course matriculated 37 emergency physicians this fall. This 12 week online course is an adaption of the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) introductory informatics 10X10 course where students complete weekly assignments and participate in online discussions. At the end of the course they meet face-to-face at the ACEP Scientific Assembly where they present their projects and discuss common themes. The online design of the course proved adaptable for a widely varied enrollment. The first class contained students from the United States and four other countries, both large urban and small rural hospitals, and both new and experienced clinicians. Extensive input from the students will assist us in further refining this annual course to better meet the needs of emergency clinicians. We will demonstrate the design of this course, which we believe offers interested residents and fellows in emergency medicine a flexible opportunity to advance their informatics training.
