Emergency medicine physicians’ perspectives on subspecialty training: A national survey

Background: Subspecialty training (sST) is an accepted educational model for the branches that have completed the maturation period. At the end of a rapid growth and reaching its limits, we wanted to determine the emergency medicine (EM) physicians’ thoughts about subspecialty training in EM in Turkey. Method: This is a national cross-sectional survey study conducted in November 2017. Participants were physicians who were receiving or who had completed emergency medicine education. Results: The response rate was 32% (n = 607) in the study. The rate of attending physicians was 45.1%, resident physicians were 40.2%, and academic staff were 14.7%. Among all the EM physicians, 85.2% noted the need for sST, 9.6% were uncertain about the need, and 5.3% found the need unnecessary. The most frequently requested trainings were toxicology (72.5%), traumatology (71.3%), and critical care (67.4%). After sST, 48.9% of EM physicians requested to work both in the emergency department and in the other relevant department, 36.1% requested to work full-time in the emergency department, and 14.9% requested to work full-time in the other relevant department. Conclusion: The great majority of EM physicians believed in the need for sST in Turkey. There were two primary reasons for wanting to apply for sST: first, and most frequently, was the contribution to advanced training, and second, was avoiding problems in the daily practice of EM.