Traditionally, educational innovations and studies are difficult to publish in mainstream EM journals for a multitude of reasons. Generally these studies are more difficult to implement given financial constraints, small sample sizes, and the complex nature of studying people's behavior (rather than searching databases or studying concrete clinical outcomes).The EM specialty slowly continues to improve and overcome such methodological flaws and obstacles in educational research. Sneak peek alert: Dr. Sue Farrell (Brigham Women's Hospital) and a team of other notable EM faculty just got a publication accepted by Academic Emergency Medicine highlighting the top 2008 educational research publications in EM. It plans to be an annual series. Keep a lookout for it.
Increasingly, education is coming to the forefront of academic emergency medicine. In addition to the traditional EM journal opportunities for publication, there are places to publish education-specific studies:
1. AAMC's MedEdPortal (link)A free peer-reviewed publication and repository service.
2. Academic EM journal- Education SupplementStarting this year, the AEM journal, partnering with the Council of Residency Directors (CORD), will be publishing an annual supplement which will feature only high quality, education-specific articles. This will likely include publications ranging from traditional educational research articles to select education abstracts from the recent CORD meeting.
3. Academic Medicine journal (link)
The journal for the Association for American Medical Colleges (AAMC)
4. Teaching and Learning in Medicine journal (link)
For those with educational innovations, this international journal publishes twice yearly on "Really Good Stuff" in medical education. These abstract-based articles are short and easy to write up, if you have a good innovation you'd like to share.