Provincial Emergency Medicine Journal Club encourages collaboration between residents, physicians
As provincial head of the Department of Emergency Medicine, one of Dr. James Stempien’s (MD) goals is to encourage front-line emergency medicine (EM) providers to communicate with each other and ensure similar standards of care are provided across the province.
By Kristen McEwen“The more we communicate, the more we exchange ideas, the better we will be,” Stempien said.
One of the ways to accomplish these goals was the creation of the provincial Emergency Medicine Journal Club.
The Emergency Medicine Journal Club meets four times a year to translate and share knowledge with physicians located across the province, not only limited to larger academic centres located at campuses in Regina and Saskatoon.
“There’s a distributed model of residents and medical students across the province – I think that's the right model,” Stempien said. “We can show that academics and excellent clinicians can be found in all corners of the province.”
As an EM resident, Dr. Lauren Roberts (MD) knows how challenging it can be for frontline providers to balance academic and clinical work.
“It can be quite hard when we’re working in the clinic, to stay on top of what’s being taught in the academic centres, and what medical knowledge is being published,” Roberts said. She is in the third-year of her residency program at the USask College of Medicine in Saskatoon.
Since the provincial club started in September 2020, Roberts and other EM residents have benefited from participating in the journal club.
“There’s a lot of value in attending from a practical standpoint as residents,” Roberts said. “This is information we’re expected to know for both our clinical practice as well as for our exams.”
“The more important thing for me is that we are going to be practicing physicians in this province,” she added. “These are going to be people that we’re working with, no matter what centre you’re working in, emergency departments in the province are set up to provide a wide range of services.”
Roberts noted that meeting other emergency medicine physicians, and clinical staff through the sessions is helpful, and the networking aspect of the club extends into clinical practice.
“Journal Club is virtual so you can literally attend from anywhere in the province, or the world,” Roberts said.
During each session, physicians and residents from different training sites from across the province -- Saskatoon and Regina to North Battleford, Swift Current and Moosomin -- present two journal articles related to emergency medicine.
Each club meeting welcomes between 30 to 50 participants. At the end of each article presentation, participants discuss how the medical information in the journal impacts frontline practice. As an added benefit, the journal clubs also count toward Continuing Medical Education points.
“Every provider is important,” Stempien said. “Every provider is part of the academic mission of the medical school. Any of us can teach.”
To learn more about the provincial EM Journal Club, or to access additional resources related to EM medical education, visit the Saskatchewan Emergency Medicine Collective. The journal club is one aspect of the collective, which is designed to support emergency medicine practitioners.