Analysis of Taiwan Emergency Physicians’ Core Competencies Based on ACGME Criteria

Abstract

The development of physicians’ core competency is related to the quality of medical practice. Accordingly, knowing how to cultivate and evaluate core competency is an important issue for medical education and management. This study used the comprehensive core competency framework proposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and employed fuzzy AHP (FAHP) and DEMANTEL methods to analyze the weight and priority, as well as the cause-and-effect cluster. The FAHP analysis yielded the following rankings of factors’ importance: (1) patient care (C1; 27.83%), (2) medical knowledge (C2; 20.77%), (3) professionalism (C5; 17.93%), (4) interpersonal and communication skills (C4; 17.41%), (5) practice-based learning and improvement (C3; 15.52%), and (6) systems-based practice (C6; 8.233%). In terms of the DEMANTEL, the effect cluster included patient care (C1), professionalism (C5) and systems-based practice (C6), and the cause cluster included medical knowledge (C2), practice-based learning and improvement (C3), and interpersonal and communication skills (C4). The findings showed that patient care (C1) results from attitudes, patience, and the other five ACGME Core Competencies. Furthermore, emergency physicians’ development also requires humanities and ethics training and practice to ensure practice-based learning (C3). This study demonstrates the importance of various factors in developing emergency physicians’ core competencies, and the findings may provide a reference for future attempts at such competency development.