Scholarly Tracks

The goal of our Scholarly Track program is to provide an opportunity for our residents to gain valuable exposure, knowledge, skills, and experience within the different subspecialty areas of Emergency Medicine. We understand that every resident has a unique set of personal and professional goals. Our Scholarly Track program is optional, flexible, and designed to be supportive for each resident’s individual career aspirations. Residents who choose to formally declare a Scholarly Track concentration will graduate with a special distinction in that subspecialty.

Our residency program currently offers Scholarly Tracks in the following disciplines within Emergency Medicine:

Admin

Track Chair: Reuben Strayer, MD

The admin track is designed for residents with an interest in ED management and hospital leadership. Residents interested in the track may be interested in further pursuing an ED Administration & Operations fellowship after residency, or obtain an advanced degree (MBA or Master’s in Healthcare Administration), or are interested in administrative/operations roles in their future employment. The track is geared towards residents with an interest in quality improvement, patient safety, patient satisfaction, coding/billing, and operations.

Critical Care

Track Chair: Elias Wan, MD

Critical care medicine is a core skill set of Emergency Medicine physicians when caring for patients. A focus on honing and developing Critical Care medical knowledge and skillset can both create a practice niche and a diversified practice for Emergency Physicians, while strengthening their ability to better care for the critically ill. There are several board eligible pathways (surgical, medical, anesthesia) for EM residents applying for critical care fellowships. A fellowship trained, dual boarded Critical Care Medicine and Emergency Physician can practice in both ICU and ED, staff specialized ICUs (Surgical, Cardiothoracic, Med/Surg and Medical) or be a leader in resuscitative/critical care management in the ED.

This track will provide clinical, educational, research and procedural opportunities to enhance exposure, skillset and knowledge to the breath of critical care medicine, while allowing residents who develop an interest in pursuing Critical Care Medicine as a career to build a stronger fellowship applications. The track will also create mentorship opportunities with current CCM fellows/ CCM trained attendings, so track participants can obtain advice regarding the CCM fellowship application process and gain insight to various job market opportunities available for an EM/critical care trained physician.

EMS

Track Chairs: Matt Friedman, MD; David Lobel, MD; David Eng, MD

As a part of residency education, the EMS resident rotation provides exposure to the daily practice of EMTs and paramedics and helps foster understanding and appreciation of the patient care they provide in the out-of-hospital setting. For residents particularly interested in EMS as a subspecialty of Emergency Medicine, the EMS Scholarly Track is designed to offer further insight into the various roles, responsibilities, and career paths for EMS physicians. We have the second largest 911 participating ambulance service in the city along with seven board certified EMS physicians at Maimonides.

By working directly alongside the MMC EMS medical directors, participating residents will receive longitudinal education focused on the following aspects of EMS medical directorship and prehospital medicine:

 1 - Educational: Receive lectures on relevant EMS topics (e.g., EMS System Design, Disaster Management, Controversial Topics/New Technologies in Prehospital Care, etc); provide paramedic education at monthly EMS CME sessions; assist with education of junior residents in EMS rotation; assist with education of medical students in EMS clerkship; consider attendance of a national EMS conference (eg, NAEMSP, EMS World Expo, etc).

 2 - Administrative: Attend biweekly/monthly regional EMS oversight meetings (e.g., Regional Emergency Medical Advisory Committee, Protocol Subcommittee, etc); participate in Online Medical Control (OLMC) QA/QI call review and feedback; attend EMT/paramedic Medical Case Reviews

3 - Research: Participate in monthly EMS journal club to discuss current topics in prehospital medicine; develop and submit a research/scholarly project with EMS and Research Divisions

4 - Clinical: Participate in BLS, ALS, Interfacility/Critical Care Unit ride-alongs, as able; participate in Event/Mass Gathering Medical Direction, as available; schedule blocks of time to work as primary OLMC physician on North Side with medical director oversight; schedule times to attend FDNY OLMC shifts with medical directors

Humanities

Track Chairs: Mert Erogul, MD; Grace Glassman, MD; Evan Mahl, MD

Medicine is grounded in science and draws on a scientific understanding of the body and its physical functioning, but at the same time it is a deeply human enterprise. Our everyday practice takes us into the inmost privacies of people’s lives and draws on skills and aptitudes that elude easy training during residency. The medical humanities help us to deepen our understanding of the doctor patient relationship, of the patient’s experience of illness as well as our own work of doctoring.

Engagement in the humanities and humanistic values is a helpful counterbalance to the relentless technico-scientific mindset that informs the practice of hospital medicine and to the unremitting procession of sick patients that can overwhelm our moral resolve. Through the humanities, we are humanized. We prime our empathic impulse and we cultivate our souls. We become culturally competent in the broadest sense of the term. The humanities and medicine track is intended to immerse residents in the humanities in parallel with their training in clinical medicine.

Medical Education

Track Chairs: Gordon Chien, MD, Shivani Mody, DO, MSEd

The importance of understanding and utilizing educational theory and adult-learning principles has become increasingly recognized in both undergraduate and graduate medical education. Future leaders of both medical schools and residency programs will need a solid foundation of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to effectively train the next generation of physicians. The goal of the Medical Education Scholarly Track is to provide residents with exposure, experience, and education surrounding key aspects of career in medical education by leveraging the expertise of the residency leadership, which includes multiple faculty members who have completed two-year fellowships and hold masters degrees in Medical Education.

Residency Director of Undergraduate Medical Education

Unique 3rd year resident leadership position in undergraduate medical education. This position is for residents interested in Med Ed and specifically undergraduate medical education. The resident works side by side with our Emergency Medicine Clerkship Director for the year. They are allotted protected time to work with the rotating medical students, aid with didactics, simulation and procedure labs. They learn about CDEM curriculum, ACGME guidelines, LCME guidelines, how to write SLOEs and give feedback. Additionally, they lead our resident driven mentorship program and recruitment webinars. This position affords the resident the opportunity to learn more about undergraduate medical education and work with our affiliate medical schools, SUNY Downstate and NYITCOM. They are an integral part of the emergency medicine rotation at our institution.

Medical Spanish

Track Chairs: Julie Cueva, DO, MSEd; Irina Sanjeevan, MD

As a large (and growing) percentage of the Emergency Department patient population speaks languages other than English, it has become increasingly necessary for providers to be able to communicate with patients effectively. The Medical Spanish scholarly track has the following objectives:

• To create or build upon a base of Spanish language proficiency for all those interested in improving their communication skills with the Latinx patient population

• To educate learners of all training levels regarding issues particular to the community they serve.

• The scholarly track will provide residents with a longitudinal curriculum in Medical Spanish that will include educational opportunities, mentorship, scholarship and opportunities for service, as well as opportunities for cultural immersion. 

Pediatric Emergency Medicine

Track Chair: Christine Rizkalla, MD

The goal of the Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) Scholarly Track is to provide Emergency Medicine residents with additional experience, instruction, and expertise in PEM, whether in preparation for PEM fellowship or to enhance skills required to care for children in a general Emergency Medicine practice setting. 

The objectives of the track are as follows: (1) Embellish upon existing knowledge of pediatrics, pediatric resuscitation and pediatric procedural skills; (2) Understand complexity of providing medical care for children from varying cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, including non-urgent conditions; (3) Establish a mentor in PEM faculty; (4) Develop scholarship in PEM through research and teaching opportunities

Simulation

Track Chairs: David Shang, MD

At its core, medical simulation is an educational technique whose purpose is to bridge the gap between the classroom and the clinical setting.  In simulation we take advantage of several principles of adult learning theory to generate pretend scenarios that can simulate the learning that occurs on shift. In practice simulation is a broad specialty that has the ability to powerfully impact learners at all levels. According to SSH (Society for Simulation in Healthcare), healthcare simulations can be said to have 4 main purposes:  education, assessment, research, and health system integration in facilitating patient safety. This breadth of experience has allowed simulation-trained emergency physicians to fulfill a variety of different roles in education and administration including APD, patient safety officer, and medical director.

Currently simulation is formally part of the GME curriculum for many specialties (EM, IM, OBGYN, Surgery, ANES, PEDS) and is well integrated in the training of many other medical professionals (nursing, EMS, advanced practice providers). As of 2016 there were over 1,000 simulation centers in the US and according to EMRA there are over 30 fellowship programs across the country.  Most are 1 year, some are 2 and some programs are combined with other fellowships such as medical education.

Simulation Scholarly Track Objectives: (1) Understand the breath of simulation use in healthcare; (2) Learn the basic principles of debriefing and practice application of various debriefing techniques; (3) Conduct procedural training and apply principles of mastery learning; (4) Understand how simulation principals can be applied for patient safety.

Social Emergency Medicine

Track Chair: Joshua Schiller, MD

The scope of practice for Emergency Medicine continues to evolve and expand to answer the needs of our patients.  The Social Emergency Medicine (SEM) scholarly track will provide a novel perspective to our EM resident physicians in that its practice and catchment will not be constrained to the grounds of the hospital.  Rather, SEM will foster the perspective that our “care” is not just to confront illness of individuals, but illness of communities as well.  This will be comprised of outreach to patient populations beyond the walls of our Emergency Department, with the intent of protecting vulnerable demographics, identifying health resource-poor communities, and determining sources of health inequity and socioeconomic drivers of disease. 

Emergency Ultrasound

Track Chairs: Alyssa Nguyen-Phuc, MD; Aaron Ryoo, MD

While Emergency Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) training has become prevalent nationwide across Emergency Medicine (EM) training programs, which abide by standardized curricula set by ACGME, there is high demand for further and more advanced training in point-of-care ultrasound. This is illustrated by the growth of Emergency Ultrasound Fellowships in recent years.

The scholarly track in Emergency POCUS will provide residents with:

1 - Educational opportunities: Residents in the scholarly track will develop their teaching voice and style by spending focused time with hands-on teaching to junior residents and medical students.

2 - Mentorship opportunities: Working closely with ultrasound faculty over the course of the scholarly track will give residents access to mentorship and to career advancement opportunities. Access to a multitude of faculty with varied niche interests in the field will allow residents to develop their own interests.

3 - Scholarship opportunities: Residents will have opportunity for development of their own research interests as well as opportunity to join in a multitude of pre-existing research projects. Burgeoning areas for research and innovation in ultrasound include nerve blocks, TEE, advanced and spectral echo, international POCUS.