Diagnostic accuracy of ophthalmology residents in emergency department consultations: trends and potential implications for training.
Ophthalmology residents' emergency diagnoses matched attendings' in most cases.
Diagnostic accuracy of ophthalmology residents in emergency department consultations: trends and potential implications for training.
Several studies analyzed the diagnostic accuracy of residents in various specialties with the aim of highlighting the risk of medical errors made by residents, but there are currently no publications on medical error-related studies throughout the years of training of ophthalmology residents.
This study aims to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of ophthalmology residents in an emergency department (emergency department) and identify factors contributing to diagnostic errors.
A retrospective analysis of consecutive medical records of all patients seen in an emergency department (emergency department) from December 27, 2022 to March 3, 2023.
share of resident diagnoses that matched the senior doctor's diagnosis
The agreement rate was significantly higher during the weekday (86%) compared to the weekend (74.2%, P = 0.012), and for residents in postgraduate year 3 (PGY-3, 90.5%) and PGY-4 (87.3%) compared to PGY-1 (71.4%) and PGY-2 (80.2%) (P = 0.025).
Residents' diagnoses of neuro-ophthalmological cases were less accurate (67.5%) compared to other etiologies (84.8%, P = 0.008) There was no significant difference in diagnostic accuracy based upon the patient's hour of arrival to the emergency department (P = 0.48).
The findings of this study may indicate a trend toward better diagnostic accuracy of ophthalmology residents in the OED. Greater inaccuracy was associated with a lack of clinical experience and occurred more in neuro-ophthalmological cases.
These results might suggest a need for educational changes to address ophthalmology residents' needs to even further improve diagnostic accuracy.