oa Descriptive case study - Interventions to minimize faculty dropouts in the Emergency Medicine Residency Training Program weekly teaching activity

Background: Managing a weekly educational planner for an Emergency Residency can be a challenging task in a busy Department due to shift pattern of work, personal development and travelling issues. In this descriptive case study, we outline the challenges and solutions to facilitate this issue. We found that key interventions in the form of timely reminders to instructors and faculty, prospectively consulting them before topic allocation and timely reminders and backup plans helps in reducing drop outs.

Methods: In this quality improvement study, we describe the interventions undertaken to ensure 100% compliance by the faculty for the teaching schedule for the year 2015/2016. We demonstrated a reduction of the dropouts to almost zero despite significant external pressures. An initial scoping exercise revealed that in the 2014/2015 planner 68.75% presentations were conducted as per the planner where as 31.25% did not follow the planner. The reasons included apologies to present (10%), eleventh hour swapping because presenter was not ready or available in country (12.5%) and non-availability of presenter (8.75%) due to leave issues. An initial questionnaire survey was undertaken to elucidate the factors that were disruptive to the faculty and the planner. We also sought ideas to help improve to the planner. A tentative planner for the year 2015/2016 was announced in advance to the whole department and all the staff and faculty were consulted to send the topics of their interest as well as their dates of annual leaves and holidays. Each presenter was called individually to confirm their availability and topics were assigned to them.

Results: We compared the first four month educational planer starting from July 2015 till October 2015 and found the compliance 100% with zero drop outs.

Conclusion: Proactive measures in making educational planner always help in maintaining compliance of the planner and reducing drop outs.