An innovative interprofessional mock trial experience: Collaboration between emergency medicine residency program and law school as a tool to demonstrate medical malpractice litigation.

Background: Due to the nature of the job and healthcare climate, emergency medicine physicians are constantly at risk for malpractice claims. Despite this, there is a gap in education around malpractice litigation. Given the considerable number of curricular topics residency programs must cover in conjunction with the volume of clinical hours residents work, we found that there is a need for an educational experience that is thorough yet compact enough to cause minimal disruption for educators and trainees. We created an easily reproducible educational session featuring collaboration between an emergency medicine residency program and a law school that covers medical malpractice proceedings in a single session. Methods: We orchestrated a high-fidelity simulation of a mock trial held inside a courtroom with the help of a collaborating judge. Medical residents made up the defendant and plaintiff, while the legal representation was made up of a law student and a recent law graduate. The details of the case were taken from Medmalreviewer.com and was reviewed by participants prior to the simulation. Results: Learning objectives included: Defining terminology around adverse events, medical errors, and malpractice, Describing the impact of medical errors, and diagraming the process of a medical malpractice lawsuit. Residents reported feeling more comfortable with the litigation process. The law student and recent law school graduate reported gaining a greater appreciation for medical practice in addition to increased confidence communicating with medical professionals. Conclusions: We believe this educational experience is sustainable and reproducible, thereby is a viable framework for other emergency medicine programs to adopt to introduce trainees to malpractice litigation.