URiM Opportunities are Abound

What's available for URiM Applicants

If you are looking to secure your away rotation in Emergency Medicine(EM) have you considered looking into Underrepresented in Medicine(URiM) scholarships within EM? There are many programs currently offering scholarships to assist you with the expenses related to externship. Programs are looking for ways to actively attract a wide variety of applicants including those currently underrepresented in EM. Check out EMRA Match Clerkship, SAEM, and AAEM's RSA for the myriad of scholarship options. 

Looking for more advice, CORD ASC EM has a dedicated Applying Guide for URiM that is well worth a read even if you already secured your rotations. Also check out the American Medical Student Association’s Race, Ethnicity, and Culture in Health Action Committee(AMSA-REACH) tremendous list of resources, the American Medical Association-Minority Affairs Section(AMA-MAS) is free for all students, regardless of AMA membership and offers many scholarship programs and awards. If you are looking for a mentor consider the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine’s Academy for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Medicine(SAEM-ADIEM).

At UMMS Baystate we have additional scholarships available this year and open spots this fall for away rotators. We are committed to serving a diverse population within the Springfield, MA area. Our goal as an emergency department is to recruit a diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of patients we see in Hampden county, to provide caring and equitable care to all who walk through our doors. 

The diversity and equity division was created within our emergency department to create initiatives focused upon increasing awareness of health inequities. Doctors Vanna Albert and Nadia Villarroel are two emergency medicine faculty members at UMMS Baystate who are leading and working with members of the emergency department to help enhance the medical education around health inequities. Some of our initiatives include providing scholarships for underrepresented students for our emergency medicine clerkship. We also aim to discuss health equity topics in a longitudinal fashion throughout the academic year within our health equity fellowship, journal club and residency didactics. Apply for an AI rotation through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO, previously known as VSAS).

This application process includes submission of a CV and letter of interest in EM

- Submission of a Supplemental Scholarship Application (500 words or less):

• Describe how your experience as an under-represented student in medicine has shaped your path to pursue a career in emergency medicine

• Email this supplemental scholarship application to: baystateemdiversityinclusion@gmail.com

Take this opportunity to explore all the options for support and involvement within URiM & EM.

Lucienne Lutfy-Clayton is an Associate Residency Director, past Chair of the ASC-EM, and avid supporter of URiM especially the really short.

Consensus Statement on 2021-22 EM Match - Implications for Applicants

 The COVID-19 pandemic is anticipated to impact the 2021-22 Residency Application cycle, though in different ways than this past year.  The Coalition for Physician Accountability (CoPA) released guidelines for Away rotations in general and all of the Emergency Medicine stakeholder organizations put together a detailed Consensus Statement that you can read here.  

Despite this attempt to provide clarity, there are still a lot of questions as to what this really means for students, especially those without a traditional "home" rotation available.  

Below is some Q&A on common questions that have come up in response to these guidelines.

When can students complete "away" rotations?  These are not supposed to be available before August 1, 2021.  However, this restriction does not apply to students without a "home" rotation.  Those students can take the first available opportunity at an institution that is open to "away" rotators.  

How many rotations can students complete?  The recommendation is one or two rotations at Residency Programs (usually called something like "Sub-Internship" or "Advanced Elective").  If two rotations, then either one "home" and one "away" or two "away" rotations.  Other EM rotations do not count towards this total, including sub-specialty rotations (like Ultrasound or Pedi-EM) that take place at a Residency Program.  

What if I have two separate "home" sites available to me?  While this is not available for many students, you can do both, but you should then NOT do an away rotation.  If you are looking to be considered outside of the region where your medical school is you are likely to be better off doing only one of the "home" sites and doing an "away" rotation somewhere else you are interested in going to.  

How many SLOE's should I have this year?  The recommendation is two SLOE's from Residency Program Leadership (Residency SLOE).  The other letters in your application can be from the other types of SLOE's, but two Residency SLOE's should always take precedence in planning your application.  However, having just one of these letters is NOT going to be disqualifying.  Having three or four Residency SLOE's is strongly discouraged and will likely result in some application reviewers down-rating your application.  

Do I need to do an "away"?  Only having one Residency SLOE will not hurt your application.  However, there is added value in having two separate residencies evaluate your performance and candidacy for EM.  If one letter is not particularly strong the other letter can compensate for that, especially if growth is shown from one rotation to the next.  This is why EM has always preferred that students do two rotations.  The lack of a second SLOE may have hurt some applicants in the 2021 Match who would not have faced similar challenges getting interviews in a previous year when a second letter would have been available to provide reassurance.  

There is still a lot we don't know about what the 2021-22 Application cycle will look like, including whether interviews will be in-person, virtual, or a hybrid of the two.  

If you have other questions, or want some additional clarification, please submit those in the comments section below.

New Program outside Philadelphia and in the 2021 Match!

There is another new Emergency Medicine residency program that has been approved to recruit for this 2021 match.  The Pottstown/Phoenixville EM Residency in suburban Philadelphia will be in ERAS soon.  The Program Director, Ernest Leber, would like to hear from interested students through the email at the end of the message below:

I have been approved for a new EM program with Tower Health at Pottstown and Phoenixville Hospitals. Our program will  be a 3-year community EM program here in suburban Philly. We will have rotations at Pottstown, Phoenixville and Reading Hospitals. We have an excellent and enthusiastic group of physicians ready to train residents/learners.

We are recruiting for a July 2021 start. The process of getting listed in ERAS takes time but should be completed within the next couple of days which does not leave us much time for students to forward us their app and for us to interview. Please pass my email address on to any students you think may be interested in my program. They can email me directly to set up an interview before we get listed on ERAS.

Ernest.Leber@towerhealth.org

Thanks everyone
~Ernie