The Impact of Emergency Department Overcrowding on Clinical Education

Nick Chmielewski speaks with Brandon Wubben, MD and Cory Wittrock, MD, physicians from the University of Iowa’s Department of Emergency Medicine. They discuss their recent article in JACEP Open, “The Impact of Emergency Department Overcrowding and Patient Boarding on Resident Point-of-Care Ultrasound Education.”

The article reviews how the effect of emergency department (ED) crowding on resident education has been difficult to quantify. The authors aimed to describe the relationship between ED crowding and residents’ ability to meet point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) education goals. After medical records at an academic level 1 trauma center were analyzed, results showed that as ED crowding increased, residents were more likely to fail to meet their POCUS education goals.