The Cost of a Learner in the Pediatric Emergency Department: A Comparison Across Two Pediatric Emergency Departments

Department

Emergency Medicine

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Pediatric Emergency Care

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Experimental learning is a foundation of medical education, but a learner in the pediatric emergency department impacts utilization, time and disposition metrics. Our study sought to compare the effect of a resident learner on metrics between 2 pediatric emergency departments.

METHODS: This retrospective study was conducted in 2019 in 2 pediatric emergency departments of tertiary care hospitals. We compared various time, utilization, and disposition metrics between resident-covered and nonresident-covered patients.

RESULTS: A total of 62,548 patient encounters were included in our analysis, with 8102 (13%) encounters were resident-managed. Residents were consistently found to see higher-acuity patients, which led to increased relative value unit generation. Residents used more diagnostic testing consistently across both sites. However, we found significant differences between time and disposition metrics between the 2 sites.

CONCLUSIONS: Residents see sicker patients and tend to order more ancillary tests, which ultimately leads to increased relative value unit generation. We hypothesize that the difference in metrics seen could be explained by the training background of residents, as well as efficiencies of the department as a whole.

First Page

e1688

Last Page

e1691

DOI

10.1097/PEC.0000000000002668

Volume

38

Issue

12

Publication Date

12-2022

Comments

Record updated with published article citation 2022-12-05 LB.

Published online ahead of print 2022-03-30.

PubMed ID

35353800

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