Creating a master training rotation schedule for emergency medicine residents and challenges in using artificial intelligence.

Abstract

Background: The allocation of resident physicians to clinical rotations presents a complex challenge that requires balancing multiple objectives with the goals of providing optimal patient care, maintaining adequate departmental staffing, and maximizing residents' training experience. While adhering to governing guidelines and training regulations, these physicians must comply with curricular milestones and educational goals for progression that must be achieved within specific time constraints. This manuscript reports on how to create annual master rotation schedules to meet the training requirements for 60 residents, while addressing the requirements detailed above.

Methods: Trainees in the field of Emergency Medicine have to meet variable essential annual curricula requirements. Methods of preparing rotations in different Emergency Departments are presented which usually need early planning to ensure the best coordination and number allocation among the different internal and external collaborative departments. This off-institution and off-service external rotation is an educational necessity regulated by the Saudi Commission of Health Sciences to maximize residents' exposure and meet the expected educational milestones unique to Emergency Medicine training.

Results: We report how to create annual master rotation schedules to meet the training requirements for 60 Emergency Medicine residents, while maintaining steady adequate departmental staffing and accommodating the different external rotation capacities, a task that is usually handled by the chief residents and program director. Although some parts of this process can be performed by using scheduling software or with particular decision support management systems, many steps are still filtered and checked manually. External circumstances mandate changes in schedules that require last-minute changes which may overrule training restrictions and make them unfeasible.

Conclusion: To create such an agile schedule, we maintain a standardized template with preset blocks and rotations. Residents can choose the most suitable track that meets their preference for year-long rotation blocks. Thus, we minimize the individual variability in the preset allocations, guarantee an even distribution, give equal chances to each resident to accommodate and approximate their individual preferences, and decrease the overall workload and time consumed annually.