Evaluation of a residency program's experience with a one-week emergency medicine resident rotation at a medical liability insurance company

Introduction: The authors' residency program implemented a one-week rotation at the office of a medical liability insurance company. Residents examined 30 closed malpractice claims cases and sat in on settlement discussions. Objective: To review the residents' evaluations of their experiences and to determine whether this was a worthwhile addition to the emergency medicine (EM) residency curriculum. Methods: This was a five-year retrospective study that reviewed residents' annual evaluations from 1994 to 1999 regarding the medical liability rotation. A five-point scale was used to score specific categories in the rotation and an open-ended section was used to collect general comments. Results: A total of 179 resident evaluations were reviewed. The quality of teaching ranked in the 80th percentile, the clinical caseload ranked in the 85th percentile, and level of responsibility ranked in the 79th percentile for all EM rotations. Specific comments included "All MDs should do this in their training"; "Quite an eye opener"; and "Good exposure to legal aspects of EM." Conclusions: Overall, EM residents found the one-week rotation to be invaluable and a good learning experience. This rotation ranked above average when compared with all of our other EM residency rotations.