Logo

Log In Sign Up |  An official publication of: American College of Emergency Physicians
Navigation
  • Home
  • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
  • Clinical
    • Airway Managment
    • Case Reports
    • Critical Care
    • Guidelines
    • Imaging & Ultrasound
    • Pain & Palliative Care
    • Pediatrics
    • Resuscitation
    • Trauma & Injury
  • Resource Centers
    • mTBI Resource Center
  • Career
    • Practice Management
      • Benchmarking
      • Reimbursement & Coding
      • Care Team
      • Legal
      • Operations
      • Quality & Safety
    • Awards
    • Certification
    • Compensation
    • Early Career
    • Education
    • Leadership
    • Profiles
    • Retirement
    • Work-Life Balance
  • Columns
    • ACEP4U
    • Airway
    • Benchmarking
    • Brief19
    • By the Numbers
    • Coding Wizard
    • EM Cases
    • End of the Rainbow
    • Equity Equation
    • FACEPs in the Crowd
    • Forensic Facts
    • From the College
    • Images in EM
    • Kids Korner
    • Medicolegal Mind
    • Opinion
      • Break Room
      • New Spin
      • Pro-Con
    • Pearls From EM Literature
    • Policy Rx
    • Practice Changers
    • Problem Solvers
    • Residency Spotlight
    • Resident Voice
    • Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine
    • Sound Advice
    • Special OPs
    • Toxicology Q&A
    • WorldTravelERs
  • Resources
    • ACEP.org
    • ACEP Knowledge Quiz
    • Issue Archives
    • CME Now
    • Annual Scientific Assembly
      • ACEP14
      • ACEP15
      • ACEP16
      • ACEP17
      • ACEP18
      • ACEP19
    • Annals of Emergency Medicine
    • JACEP Open
    • Emergency Medicine Foundation
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Medical Editor in Chief
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Awards
    • Authors
    • Article Submission
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright Information

Pandemic Preparedness for Residencies

By Kimberly Chernoby, MD, JD; Devin Doos, MD; Andrea Purpura, MD; and Emily Wagner, MD | on April 14, 2020 | 0 Comment
Resident Voice
  • Tweet
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
Print-Friendly Version
Shutterstock.com

Editors’ Note: This article was accepted on March 11, 2020, and was accurate at that time. Because information about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 is evolving rapidly, please verify these recommendations and information.

You Might Also Like
  • Coronavirus Impacts on Emergency Medicine Residency
  • ACEP Fights to Protect Emergency Physicians During Pandemic
  • Parenting and practicing: how to make both work
Explore This Issue
ACEP Now: Vol 39 – No 04 – April 2020

As chief residents, we are proud to lead a group of residents who provide around-the-clock staffing for three busy hospitals. Additionally, our residents travel internationally to provide medical care, travel to conferences to disseminate their scholarly work, and raise families. The recent spread of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, has raised a series of challenges over the last few days and weeks that have caused us to consider how we might prepare as a residency for this and other pandemics.

Clinical Coverage

Our immediate concern was the possibility of increased need for sick call, particularly in the event of resident quarantine. Routinely, we have daily sick call coverage, and the shift is later repaid by the person activating. If a second absence requires coverage beyond initial sick call activation, the on-call chief solicits same-day availability from the resident pool with chief resident coverage as a backstop. Our solution was to develop a second string of sick call. The upcoming schedule was already published, so we relied on volunteers for this and successfully filled our backup sick call schedule.

The decision to develop a backup sick call system was not easy. We had concerns about whether this was a resident responsibility. How many layers of coverage are residents responsible for providing? When do we consider mechanisms like altering shift times and duration or having gaps in coverage? When do we pull residents from electives? What happens when we run out of additional sick call volunteers?

Resident Safety, Well-Being, and Health

As emergency medicine residents, we are part of the team on the front line of patient care. This station puts the emergency department team at particularly high risk in an infectious outbreak. Keeping residents safe and healthy is an important goal itself and because they are an integral part of the workforce. We had added concerns about our residents who were pregnant, immunocompromised, or otherwise at increased risk.

Treating affected patients requires safety measures like special triage procedures and use of personal protective equipment (PPE). It is important that programs ensure team members are educated on how to appropriately use PPE and new departmental protocols. Simulation is a powerful training tool when infectious rates are low. We are currently implementing a simulation to model these issues. 

We also considered how to involve residents in care of these patients. Residents are not generally excluded from taking care of any patient population, including patients with infectious diseases. However, there are practical issues to consider like the limited availability of PPE, limiting the number of individuals who come into contact with an identified case, and the fact that all patients are seen by an attending. Currently, we are limiting direct resident involvement in identified ED cases of COVID-19.

Finally, there is the issue of educational activities. Limiting large gatherings can be helpful to prevent transmission of a disease, but certain educational requirements like conference and journal club are organized as large in-person gatherings. We are moving to teleconferencing educational programming where possible.

Pages: 1 2 3 | Single Page

Topics: coronavirusCOVID-19EducationResidency Program

Related

  • Dr. Joe Sachs and “The Pitt” Are Redefining Public Health Education Through Storytelling

    June 11, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • June 2025 News from the College

    June 5, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • Reader Responds: Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Matter in Medical Education

    October 9, 2024 - 0 Comment

Current Issue

ACEP Now May 03

Download PDF

Read More

No Responses to “Pandemic Preparedness for Residencies”

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*
*

Wiley
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Advertise
  • Cookie Preferences
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. ISSN 2333-2603