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

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.