Emergency Medicine Track

Family physicians play a crucial role in the rural emergency medicine workforce throughout the United States. To better prepare residents who are interested in practicing rural emergency medicine after graduation, we developed an Emergency Medicine Track for second- and third-year family medicine residents at Cascades East.

The Emergency Medicine Track includes:

• Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) Certification provided at no cost through OHSU.

• Additional Emergency Department Experience: Two weeks of dedicated emergency medicine elective time beyond the residency's standard emergency medicine curriculum.

• Active Participation on the Sky Lakes Trauma Team: Residents receive trauma activations while on designated rotations and serve as trauma team leaders under the supervision of emergency medicine and surgical physicians, gaining hands-on experience in trauma stabilization.

• Quarterly Trauma Committee Participation: Residents participate in multidisciplinary trauma committee meetings to gain experience in trauma systems, quality improvement, and performance review.

We have evaluated the impact of this curriculum in our published study, Improving Trauma Stabilization Training for Rural Family Medicine Residents, in   Family Medicine journal (link: https://journals.stfm.org/media/b4fhvcgx/fammed-2025-0385.pdf). The study demonstrated that creating a dedicated emergency medicine training track for interested family medicine residents increased graduates' comfort in trauma stabilization and was associated with a much higher rate of entering the rural emergency medicine workforce then the national average.