How do we know if we (or our new-hire clinicians) are ready to practice urgent care medicine independently? Did you recently graduate from school or switch from another field of medicine, or are you in charge of hiring these new clinicians? The Urgent Care Clinical Readiness Assessment is the answer.
What is the UC Clinical Readiness Assessment? 📝
Created by Hippo Education in collaboration with the College of Urgent Care Medicine (CUCM) & Urgent Care Association (UCA), Urgent Care Clinical Readiness Assessment is a 100-question written assessment that standardizes how organizations measure clinical readiness and identifies knowledge deficiencies, uncovering critical areas for improvement for clinicians entering the urgent care field.
The questions are supported by evidence-based medicine but take the limited resources, high acuity, and high throughput of the urgent care environment into consideration. We brought in UC clinicians, fellowship directors and CUCM board members to identify the most critical and relevant topics for new-hire clinicians to know. When curating the content, we analyzed recent data trends presented by UCA, including a decrease in procedure coding for procedures such as lacerations and fracture repair. We included questions to address these trends and ensure that clinicians feel comfortable and competent in these areas. Additionally, we took quality metrics into account, such as obtaining an electrocardiogram in chest pain patients and urine pregnancy test in female patients of reproductive ages presenting with abdominal pain, and included questions specific to these standards.
Why was it developed?
We’ve needed a standard for clinical readiness to advance the urgent care specialty. Urgent care is a complex, fast-paced environment with the potential for high-acuity patients (😳 but also 💪). Clinicians often work independently, allowing advanced practitioners to function at the top of their scope, but it's also more challenging to set a baseline standard across the specialty. This assessment was developed to help urgent care organizations and individual clinicians assess the educational needs and readiness of their practitioners (or themselves). The assessment covers the need-to-know information and decision-making skills required to provide safe and high-quality care to our communities. Clinicians can use their results and identified areas of weakness to guide them through products such as Hippo’s Urgent Care Bootcamp, allowing them to focus on high-need educational topics first.
Where can I access it?
This assessment will be available as an add-on to the Urgent Care Bootcamp course, alongside the Urgent Care Bootcamp Post-Test, also an add-on. Upon finishing, you'll earn a CUCM Certificate of Completion and 8.25 AMA PRA Category 1 CME Credits™. The Urgent Care Clinical Readiness Assessment may be used as an accepted UC-specific activity required to become a Fellow of the College of Urgent Care Medicine.
