Residency Program | Awards | Publications | Tidewater Emergency Medical Services

The Department of Emergency Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School is proud to serve as a center of excellence for Emergency Medicine in Virginia. The Department provides a comprehensive approach to the discipline of Emergency Medicine, providing leadership in clinical, academic and prehospital services.

Academics

The Department of Emergency Medicine at the Eastern Virginia Medical School sponsors a fully accredited PGY-I through PGY-III Emergency Medicine residency program with nine positions in each class. The program has maintained Continued Full Accreditation by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) since its inception in 1981. We received independent academic departmental status in 1992, becoming only the twenty-sixth such academic department of Emergency Medicine in the United States at that time.

Additionally, many other residency programs at EVMS send their residents to our department for clinical rotations under our faculty's supervision. For medical students, the Department offers a one-month clinical elective in the MSIV year (with limited availability for MSIII students). While primarily available to EVMS students, we happily accept visiting students from other schools every year.

All of the faculty of the Department of Emergency Medicine are board-certified or board-prepared in Emergency Medicine; a number of our faculty have board-certification in two disciplines. Our faculty are nationally recognized: among the nine residency faculty, we boast three ACEP National Faculty Teaching Award recipients; a Council of Residency Directors (CORD) in Emergency Medicine Faculty Teaching Award winner; and the 2003 EMRA Residency Director of the Year recipient.

The faculty provide 24/7 on-site clinical supervision at all of our training sites, providing a uniform level of supervision. The mix of academic and community-based Emergency Medicine physicians provides a unique opportunity to experience first-hand the different career paths available in Emergency Medicine.

Clinical Services

Our Department provides care to over 325,000 patients every year. We proudly see every patient who presents to our EDs, many of whom are unable to obtain care anywhere else. This role as a "safety net" for the health care system is fundamental to our practice.

Prehospital care is a critical public service that requires strong physician support to fulfill its mission. Faculty members of the EVMS Department of Emergency Medicine serve as Operational Medical Director (OMDs) for the majority of the local EMS agencies. Since 1987, five of our faculty have been awarded the "Governors Award for Outstanding Operational Medical Director" - the highest recognition possible for an OMD in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In fact, the Award is now named in honor of one of our former faculty members (Frank M. Yeiser, M.D.). We have received this award more than any other institution in Virginia.

Research

The advancement of our specialty depends on research, which is an important departmental goal. As a young specialty, Emergency Medicine remains ripe for investigation. Both residents and faculty participate in multiple research projects throughout the academic year, covering wide-ranging topics germane to our practice and mission. This work frequently culminates in presentations at the state or national level, followed by peer-reviewed publication. In fact, we rank in the top tier of all Emergency Medicine residency programs in the U.S. regarding the number of peer-review publications authored by our faculty and residents.