Emergency Medicine Residency at AdventHealth Tampa

The AdventHealth Tampa emergency medicine residency curriculum is designed to comprehensively address the core content outlined by the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) Qualifying Examination and the Model of the Clinical Practice of Emergency Medicine. Our goal is to graduate exceptional physicians who are prepared to excel in a wide range of practice environments, from community emergency departments to academic medical centers.

This goal is achieved through a dynamic and supportive learning environment that integrates classroom instruction, simulation and skills laboratories and bedside teaching. Educational strategies include bedside instruction, a flipped classroom model, small-group learning and a structured formal conference curriculum. Residents develop a strong fund of knowledge through direct patient care across a diverse patient population under close faculty supervision, complemented by a robust and engaging didactic program.

A cornerstone of our didactic curriculum is a weekly five-hour emergency medicine conference held every Thursday morning. Each month, the majority of instruction is centered on core emergency medicine topics, supplemented by required readings, assigned Rosh Review questions and monthly quizzes to assess comprehension and reinforce learning.

Select Thursdays are dedicated to skills labs, simulation, subspecialty-focused sessions, research presentations, asynchronous learning and structured off-site or experiential learning activities, as outlined in the program’s educational schedule.

Conference content includes interactive lectures and small-group discussions covering core EM topics, journal club, wellness and resilience, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), departmental morbidity and mortality, resident-led case presentations, quality and patient safety, team dynamics, telemedicine, transitions of care, guest lectures from national and international experts and oral and OSCE-style board preparation sessions. Residents also participate in gamified learning activities to reinforce asynchronous and independent study.

The multidisciplinary conference held monthly emphasizes quality improvement, patient transfers and handoffs, risk management, patient safety, communication, wellness, team building and research collaboration. On select Thursdays, residents attend regional and state conferences and subspecialty-focused educational events in areas such as ultrasound, tactical and EMS medicine, disaster response and wilderness medicine.

Faculty members are actively engaged in the educational mission and are expected to attend at least 25% of conferences and provide a minimum of 12 hours of formal instruction annually through lectures, skills labs, mentorship, and scholarly activities. The program also offers virtual lecture sessions approximately six times per year, enabling national and international experts to participate and allowing visiting residents and medical students to engage in the learning experience.

Resident competency is assessed through multiple structured mechanisms, including mock in-training written examinations, oral board simulations, monthly quizzes, shift-based oral evaluations and simulation-based assessments of procedural and resuscitative skills. Residents are also encouraged to participate in regional and national emergency medicine competitions in areas such as disaster response, wilderness medicine and ultrasound.

Reading

Monthly reading assignments in core content areas that correlate with didactic lectures. Reading assignments are from Tintinelli, Rosen, UpToDate, as well as select journal and foundation scenarios. Residents are quizzed in didactics for comprehension and retention. Will be based on core content of EM to cover twice during residency.

In-Training Prep Series

The residents have access to a free web-based highly focused review (www.intrainingprep.com) that emphasizes key areas of relevance for the in-training exam and the core content of emergency medicine. The review identifies elements that require additional study so that the resident can allocate time to study effectively. Highly tested materials as well as past exam trends are also covered. The course is based on ABEM’s In Training Exam. The review will not only sharpen clinical knowledge for the test but will strengthen Emergency Medicine clinical knowledge base overall. The review includes audio and multi-media components, which are proven to help residents have higher information retention.

Our longitudinal curriculum in Emergency Medicine is a structured educational approach that spreads learning experiences over the entire duration of residency. Our model integrates various aspects of EM training, as below, throughout the residency years. It aims to enhance knowledge retention, skill development and preparedness for board certification through spaced repetition and interleaved learning.

Topics include:

• Addiction medicine and toxicology and MAT
• Administration and quality improvement
• Disaster, climate and crisis response
• Emergency medical services (EMS) and disaster
• Health equity and social EM
• Health policy and advocacy
• High-resource site exposure
• Lifelong learning and procedural maintenance
• Low-resource site exposure
• Maternal and reproductive emergency care, OB emergencies, pelvic skills, sexual health
• Medical education and mentorship
• Multidisciplinary decision-making, team leadership, conflict resolution, critical resuscitation coordination
• Observation medicine
• Palliative, geriatric, complex care
• Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS)
• Research and scholarly activity track
• Resilience, wellness and mental health
• Telemedicine and digital health
• Transfers and transitions of care

During pediatric-focused rotations, residents participate in in-person clinical and educational sessions alongside board-certified, fellowship-trained pediatric emergency medicine physicians. These sessions include direct patient evaluations in the emergency department, oral case discussions and guided clinical teaching.

Residents also attend pediatric-focused conferences where the education team presents and reviews core pediatric emergency medicine topics. Near the conclusion of each rotation, residents are expected to present an interesting or instructive case to their peers and attending physicians, fostering clinical reasoning and communication skills.

Throughout their four-year training, residents receive dedicated pediatric airway management instruction and hands-on practice. Required educational assignments include pediatric medication dosing reviews and focused readings in pediatric emergency medicine, designed to reinforce safe, evidence-based clinical practice.

All sessions and educational activities are led by pediatric emergency medicine faculty to ensure high-quality, specialty-specific instruction and mentorship.

Every Year Lectures

• Acquired cardiac disease (myocarditis, Kawasaki, cardiomyopathy)
• Aerodigestive foreign bodies and caustic ingestions
• Appropriate antibiotic use in children
• Common upper respiratory infections
• Cyanotic congenital heart disease
• Diarrhea and vomiting
• Fever in neonates and infants/children
• Fluids and electrolytes
• Hemoglobinopathies
• Interesting pediatric radiologic findings lecture 1
• Interesting pediatric radiologic findings lecture 2
• Non-accidental trauma
• Pediatric allergic emergencies
• Pediatric asthma
• Pediatric DKA
• Pediatric EKGs
• Pediatric GI emergencies
• Pediatric orthopedics (non-trauma)
• Pediatric orthopedics (trauma)
• Pediatric pain control and sedation
• Pediatric respiratory emergencies (upper and lower tract disease)
• Pediatric RSI
• Pediatric seizures (afebrile and febrile)
• Pediatric shock management
• Pediatric trauma, general differences
• Pediatric trauma, head trauma and c-spine
• Pediatric UTI
• Rashes (including newborn rashes)
• SIDS/ALTE
• Soft tissue infections of the neck
• The pediatric acute abdomen

Every Other Year Lectures

• Drowning
• Formula and formula intolerance
• Hematologic emergencies (anemia, neutropenia, thrombocytopenia)
• Leukemia and lymphoma
• Oncologic emergencies
• Pediatric-focused toxicology lecture
• Pediatric headaches
• Pediatric metabolic diseases
• Pediatric psychiatric issues (psych faculty)
• Pediatric renal disease
• Pediatric urologic emergencies (urologist)
• Sexual abuse

Optional Lectures

• Antibiotic resistance
• Malpractice meningitis
• Pediatric ophthalmologic emergencies
• Pediatric oropharyngeal disease (dental and mucosal)
• Youth and gang violence

Intern Lectures in Pediatrics

• Approach to the medical lecture
• Fever in children
• Introduction to pediatric trauma
• Introduction to the pediatric patient
• Pediatric rapid sequence intubation
• Slide-making lecture

The Oral/OSCI Exam measures skills that cannot be tested on a multiple-choice exam. It's important that ABEM-certified physicians can clearly communicate with patients and their families, organize information about patients, and make good choices for patient management. Although the oral format is being modified, we currently use simulations, foundations and a dedicated semi-annual oral boards test to evaluate clinical skills, bedside manner, communication, professionalism and teamwork. These sessions are led by faculty and visiting residents and students may participate. Our emphasis will be on the new oral and in person ABEM exam. The new certifying exam will allow candidates to use the skills and methods learned in training and apply them to simulated, real-world clinical scenarios to determine if they meet the high standards required for the independent practice of emergency medicine.

We will focus on these two areas:

Clinical Care cases are based on guided scenarios that will require candidates to facilitate a dialogue with an examiner to demonstrate how they prioritize patient care, assess their adaptability to unexpected clinical changes, and interact with various sources of information.

OSCE cases will assess communication, professionalism, and technical skills related to patient care. Scenarios could involve standardized patient actors or procedural equipment.

Our new simulation scenarios will focus on testing. It will assess:

• Clinical decision making and shared decision making
• High-stakes communications and difficult conversations
• Leadership
• Patient communications beyond diagnosis
• Prioritization
• Procedural skills
• Task switching
• Team management
• Troubleshooting

Journal Club is held monthly. We use an evidence-based approach and review articles on diagnosis and therapy, focusing on meta-analyses whenever possible. We choose landmark studies that have an applicability and impact on clinical care. We expect the residents to read and critically appraise the articles using worksheets that we provide. These presentations are led by a senior resident in consultation with a faculty member. These presentations are open to visiting residents and medical students. Occasionally, these presentations will be multi-disciplinary in format, depending on which medical topic the review may involve.

These also will be hosted outside of didactics to promote wellness. Several primary articles with accompanying supporting articles are selected on a particular topic (which may include practice-changing research) with a focus on evidence-based medicine. Journal Club participants scrutinize the methodology and the statistical analysis of the research and discuss the broader implications of the results. Journal club is an opportunity for lively debate and provides a wonderful venue for camaraderie and fellowship.

Rather than simply functioning as a vehicle by which to review the EM literature, we use a carefully structured curriculum to create a foundation for critical thinking upon which residents build the expertise to meaningfully reflect on their own knowledge gaps, identify and efficiently interpret the relevant evidence and refine their clinical practice in the application of their discoveries at the bedside. In so doing, we create educated consumers of the medical literature, but moreover, life-long learners whose patients are guaranteed to receive the best care.

Life-long learning skills are essential for practicing physicians. Therefore, understanding the basic principles of EBM and appraising the literature is a core competency to be learned during residency. Journal club is the primary vehicle the program uses to teach residents the skills to maintain proficiency in the ever-evolving field of medicine. Specifically, JC is resident-driven, helps to assess milestones, and helps to achieve the core goal in developing skills as a lifelong learner.

The goals for journal club include the ability to:

• Form a clinical question in PICO format
• Find literature to answer the question
• Appraise the literature
• Apply the findings to clinical practice, as applicable

• Administration
• Education
• EMS
• Event Medicine
• Global Health/Health Equity
• Research
• Rural EM
• Ultrasound

AdventHealth Tampa offers a comprehensive faculty–resident mentorship program designed to provide consistent guidance, professional development and personal support throughout residency training. Each resident is paired with a dedicated faculty mentor who provides longitudinal mentorship from the start of training through graduation.

Mentors meet with their mentees quarterly and are actively engaged in supporting academic progress and career development. This includes helping residents track educational milestones, maintain procedural logs, keep certifications current and develop and update a professional curriculum vitae.

Mentors also guide residents in exploring scholarly and career interests, facilitate connections with departmental subspecialists and assist directly with project development and research initiatives.

Beyond academic and professional growth, mentors focus on residents’ personal well-being and adjustment to the demands of residency. The mentor–mentee relationship is designed to be a safe, supportive space where residents can openly discuss challenges, seek guidance and raise concerns related to training or wellness.

While residents are encouraged to build multiple mentoring relationships throughout their residency, their assigned faculty mentor remains a consistent point of support — providing individualized guidance, advocacy and assistance in areas requiring additional focus or development.
The mentorship program also plays a key role in preparing residents for a smooth transition into fellowship training or independent practice, ensuring that graduates are well-supported as they advance to the next stage of their careers.

As residents progress through emergency medicine residency training, there is often a desire to develop greater knowledge and experience in an area within emergency medicine. To facilitate this as well as to assist those without a preference in developing further experience, the Department of Emergency Medicine has developed a process to gain this experience. This process involves identification of an area of focus, oversight by identified faculty within that interest area, focused study and activities, as well as the opportunity to participate in scholarly activity within that area. Areas of focus include:

• Academics
• Addiction medicine/tox
• Administration
• Advocacy
• Critical care
• EMS
• Global health
• Simulation
• Ultrasound
• Patient safety and quality
• Disparities in health care

Process

At the conclusion of the PGY1 year, the resident identifies their area of interest. This determination is made in cooperation with the program director. Once identified, the resident will meet with the individual(s) responsible for that area. Specific learning materials and resources will be provided to the resident. Dedicated time during the PGY2 year will be provided to provide protected time to focus on the identified area.

Responsibilities of the Resident

The resident will:

• Identify an area of interest
• Meet with the attending physician(s) responsible for that area
• Study and review the resources provided for that area
• Participate in activities related to that activity
• Consider activities related to that area at national/regional meetings
• Participate in scholarly activities related to that area

Responsibilities of the Program and Supervising Physicians

• Provide physicians with expertise in identified areas of interest
• Provide resources and materials related to that area of interest
• Provide dedicated time during the rotation schedule for this area of interest
• Provide opportunities for scholarly activity related to the identified area of interest

Elective Opportunities

• Addiction medicine/tox
• Administration
• Advocacy
• Critical care
• EMS
• Global health
• Simulation
• Ultrasound
• Patient safety and quality
• Disparities in health care
• AdventHealth subspecialties

The Department of Emergency Medicine maintains encourages education in Disparities and Inclusion through a curriculum focused on advancing health equity and addressing health care disparities within our department and the communities we serve.

We plan to host regular educational sessions open to faculty, residents and medical students, including “lunch and learn” discussions led by members of the EM disparities team. Our commitment to this also spans the recruitment and selection process, helping ensure our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is reflected in trainee recruitment, selection and retention.

To further support equitable access and engagement, the department organizes informational webinars for applicants across institutional specialties. These sessions highlight the program’s learning environment, life in Tampa and the many health equity and community outreach initiatives on the AdventHealth Tampa campus that strengthen the pathway into our residency program.

Through these efforts, we strive to cultivate a diverse and inclusive House Staff that reflects the communities we serve and is equipped to provide compassionate, culturally responsive care.

The ACGME expects residents to participate in the education of students, peers, and other health care professionals. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education requires residents to demonstrate familiarity with clerkship educational objectives and be prepared for their roles in teaching and assessment. In response, and to enhance residents’ teaching skills, the emergency medical program at AdventHealth Tampa will implement a dedicated “Resident-as-Teacher” curriculum to begin their first academic year. The curriculum will consist of a combination of formal instruction and practical experience, to take place both during conference and at the bedside. Educational theory and topics will be taught throughout the year by the department’s educational leadership team, including the GME faculty, through a variety of modalities. The practical component of the curriculum will consist of formal education to be delivered to the program by the residents as follows:

PGY-1 Residents each present three to four 30-minute didactics on a core emergency medicine topic.

PGY-2 Residents each present six 30-minute didactics on a core emergency medicine topic, with more evidence-based content. Also, one 30-minute Morbidity and Mortality didactic, with the topic and content identified during the administrative rotation. They will be required to present a quality assurance project idea and summarize implementation.

PGY-3 Residents each present six 30-minute didactics on a core emergency medicine topic and one 60-minute grand rounds format didactic, the content of which includes a combination of best and most recent evidence and is meant to be immediately translatable to an external speaking engagement. They will also moderate and lead journal club sessions. They are also required to present a poster and/or abstract on their research project.

PGY-4 Residents each present six 30-minute didactics on a core emergency medicine topic, and one 60-minute grand rounds format didactic, the content of which includes a combination of best and most recent evidence and is meant to be immediately translatable to an external speaking engagement. They will also moderate and lead journal club sessions. They will also present medical student and off-service lectures.
Each resident has a faculty mentor available to assist them with developing their educational sessions and evaluate them on their level of preparation and execution of the instructional plan.

All categorical PGY 2 EM residents will be automatically enrolled in a longitudinal research course that spans an academic year. This course is faculty-led. This is designed to help provide the tools and support necessary to accomplish the goals for scholarly activity and quality improvement. PGY 1 residents have the option to take the course during their intern year instead of the PGY 2 year. Feedback on your performance in this course will be provided to your program, similar to other types of clinical rotations.

Research Requirements:

The institution follows the ACGME Common Program Requirement listed below. In addition, the institution has its own goals for resident scholarship that align with and reconcile individual program requirements.

FROM ACGME COMMON PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS:

IV.D.3.a) Residents must participate in scholarship. (Core)

Attendance:

All lectures require mandatory attendance. There will be a virtual option for those off campus. Anyone who is on campus should plan to attend in person. Residents on vacation, nights or other rotations where attendance is not possible will be excused; however, you are still responsible for the material and will need to watch the recording and answer the post-questions.