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Learning Objectives: Identify and compare the lessons students learn from participating in peer role-play as either physician, patient, or observer.Background: Communication Skills Training (CST) is an important part of undergraduate medical training, with instructional modalities including peer role-play (RP) and simulated patients (SP). Research comparing effectiveness of RP and SP is mixed, with some evidence suggesting RP may better develop empathy. Unlike with SP CST, students participating in RP CST spend time portraying patients. The impact of this patient role-play has not been explored.Methods: We developed a virtual RP case in which a physician communicates diagnostic uncertainty to a patient being discharged from the emergency department. We scripted three roles: physician, patient, and observer. Third-year medical students complete the RP, then enter small-group break-out rooms (10 students) for facilitated debriefing, which we transcribe. Each session included only students from a single role. Qualitative analysis began with generation of inductive codes. Pairs of researchers developed preliminary codebooks for each role, testing codes against several transcriptions. We integrated these codebooks into a master codebook to be used on all transcriptions.Results: 273 students participated, yielding 24 transcriptions with >85,000 words. Preliminary analysis revealed themes that differed between roles. Students playing the physician tend to emphasize useful lessons they gleaned, whereas those playing patients discussed empathy and the emotional impact of decisions by the physician role.Conclusion: Initial results indicate that role-playing as patient may support learning in ways that playing as physician does not. Educators should utilize RP with an eye towards these benefits, emphasizing engagement when playing the role of the patient.

INTRODUCTION: Telehealth has the potential to significantly change the specialty of emergency medicine (EM) and has rapidly expanded in EM during the COVID pandemic; however, it is unclear how EM should intersect with telehealth. The field lacks a unified research agenda with priorities for scientific questions on telehealth in EM. METHODS: Through the 2020 Society for Academic Emergency Medicines annual consensus conference, experts in EM and telehealth created a research agenda for the topic. The multiyear process used a modified Delphi technique to develop research questions related to telehealth in EM. Research questions were excluded from the final research agenda if they did not meet a threshold of at least 80% of votes indicating important or very important. RESULTS: Round 1 of voting included 94 research questions, expanded to 103 questions in round 2 and refined to 36 questions for the final vote. Consensus occurred with a final set of 24 important research questions spanning five breakout group topics. Each breakout group domain was represented in the final set of questions. Examples of the questions include: Among underserved populations, what are mechanisms by which disparities in emergency care delivery may be exacerbated or ameliorated by telehealth (health care access) and In what situations should the quality and safety of telehealth be compared to in-person care and in what situations should it be compared to no care (quality and safety). CONCLUSION: The primary finding from the process was the breadth of gaps in the evidence for telehealth in EM and telehealth in general. Our consensus process identified priority research questions for the use of and evaluation of telehealth in EM to fill the current knowledge gaps. Support should be provided to answer the research questions to guide the evidenced-based development of telehealth in EM.

Introduction: Medical students pursuing an emergency medicine (EM) residency are advised to obtain at least two Standardized Letters of Evaluation (SLOE). Students often complete one rotation at their home institution and at least one “away” rotation at a program separate from their home institution. The SLOE was introduced as an objective evaluation tool. The aim of this study was to determine whether there was a difference in scores between home rotation and away rotation SLOEs.Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the SLOEs of all applicants to an urban, academic EM residency program. For each SLOE, we calculated a composite score from rankings in seven “Qualifications for EM” (CS7), and converted comparative rank score (CRS) and estimated rank list position (ERP) to percentile scores. The CS7, CRS, and ERP on the home rotation SLOE were compared to those of the away SLOE using a paired t-test.Results: An evaluation of 721 applicants with at least one home SLOE and one away SLOE demonstrated a significant increase in the ERP of home rotators (P = 0.003). The data did not demonstrate a statistically significant difference in the CS7 (P = 0.69), or CRS (P = 0.97).Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that the only difference in SLOEs is that students are likely to be given a slightly higher estimated placement on the rank order list on a home SLOE. We hope this will help residency leadership with reviewing applications.

The inclusion of technologies such as telepractice, and virtual reality in the field of communication disorders has transformed the approach to providing healthcare. This research article proposes the employment of similar advanced technology – social robots, by providing a context and scenarios for potential implementation of social robots as supplements to stuttering intervention. The use of social robots has shown potential benefits for all the age group in the field of healthcare. However, such robots have not yet been leveraged to aid people with stuttering. We offer eight scenarios involving social robots that can be adapted for stuttering intervention with children and adults. The scenarios in this article were designed by human–robot interaction (HRI) and stuttering researchers and revised according to feedback from speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The scenarios specify extensive details that are amenable to clinical research. A general overview of stuttering, technologies used in stuttering therapy, and social robots in health care is provided as context for treatment scenarios supported by social robots. We propose that existing stuttering interventions can be enhanced by placing state-of-the-art social robots as tools in the hands of practitioners, caregivers, and clinical scientists.