The first ever consensus conference on end of shift assessment of medical students was held at CORD Academic Assembly this past week in Nashville, TN. This conference was created and delivered by four amazing clerkship directors, three of whom are women!

The conference was initially conceived over a coffee conversation at CORD three years ago, and evolved into a high level discussion, expanding to include the entire CDEM membership. The goals of the conference were twofold: first, to come to consensus on best practices surrounding the process of clinical assessment of medical students in emergency medicine; and second, to develop a national end-of-shift assessment form. Prior to this conference, assessment practices and tools were extremely variable and often suboptimal.  After this conference, we hope to unite our specialty around commonalities, thereby improving assessment quality for students and making Emergency Medicine the first specialty to develop a national approach to this crucial problem.

The three women on the executive committee are:

Kathy Hiller from the University of Arizona, Luan Lawson from East Carolina University and Jules Jung from Johns Hopkins.

(The fourth member of the leadership is Doug Franzen from the University of Washington.)

Kathy is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, and has served as the Clerkship Director at the U of A for nearly a decade. She sits on committees/task forces within CDEM, CORD, AAMC, NBME and ABEM. She is the proud mama of two girls, and tries hard to be a good role model for them professionally and personally.

Jules is also an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, and is a member of the CDEM executive committee.  She is the Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Simulation Center, and leads workshops on simulation-based teaching and assessment nationally and internationally.  This year she celebrates the tenth anniversary of her appointment as Director of Undergraduate Medical Education for her department, as well as the tenth birthday of her hilarious and brilliant twins, Jack and Zoe.

Luan is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and the Assistant Dean of Curriculum, Assessment, and Clinical Academic Affairs at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine.  She serves as the Treasurer of the CDEM executive committee,  medical director of the Office of Clinical Skills Assessment and Education, and the Co-PI of ECU’s Redesigning Education and Accelerating Change in Healthcare (REACH) grant awarded by the AMA.  She and her husband, Lee, have 3 wonderful children who keep them busy with ponies, dance, and soccer.