Emergency medicine residency training for out-of-hospital emergencies

The new residency training program in family and community medicine requires a rotation responding to calls received by primary care and emergency services. The intensity of these rotations ranges from 25% of calls for first-year residents to 75% for fourth-year trainees. All emergencies in the Spanish autonomous community of Madrid are handled by the SUMMA112 emergency medical service, which has developed and launched a program specifically for these residents. The program is new to Spain, where until now no specialty training in emergency medicine has been offered. The developers created an educational unit with a coordinator, instructors in family and community medicine, and an organizing committee. The SUMMA112 syllabus is compatible with the training program of the Spanish national board for the specialty of family and community medicine, although additional competencies that are highly specific to emergency health services have been incorporated. Teaching and assessment methods have also been planned so that instructors will take a similar educational approach. This article explains these improvements to the syllabus so that the description can serve as a starting point once the specialty in emergency medicine is approved in Spain. [Emergencias 2009;21:144-150]